^THE- STORY OF- 
THENINETEENTH 

CENTVRYi 



ELBRIDGESBRGDKS 







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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/storyofnineteent02broo 




THE FIRST TELEGRAM 

{Chajnbcr of the Supreme Court, Washington, May 24, 1844.) 

Professor Morse sending the Despatch as Dictated by Miss Annie Ellsworth 

— THE Key Note to the Achievements of the Nineteenth Century: 

"WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT" {See Page l&o) 



The STORY OF THE j. ^ ^ 

NINETEENTH CENTURY 

^ J' J^ Of the CHRISTIAN ERA 



By 

ELBRWGE S. BROOKS 

Author of " The True Story of the United 
States," "The Story of Our War With 
Spain" "The American Soldier" "The 
A'merica;i Sailor" "In Blue and White" 

Etc. ' 



God 'j' ill his heaven — 

All 'j- rig'kl IV ilk the world!'''' 

Robert Browniiii, 



ILLUSTRATED 



BOSTON-; 
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY 



l«"WO COPIES RECEIVEJD, 

Office of the 

APR 2 11900 

COPYRIGHT, igoo, HegUfar of Copyfltfi,*.. 

^F LOTHROP »«*% 

PUBLISHING 

COMPANY. 



>10S5 



Electrotyped, 

Printed, and Bound by 

C. J. Peters &* lS'i?^ and 

P. H. Gilson Company, 

Boston, U.S.A. 



SECOND COPY. 






PREFACE. 



WITHOUT binding myself to the fiat of the mathe- 
matician, or the assumption of the Emperor of 
Germany, I have taken, for the purpose of this "story," 
the convenient round numbers of 1800 to 1900, inclusive, 
as constituting the Nineteenth Century. Years count for 
but little in the evolution of a divine plan, and the tyranny 
of figures is a matter of human limitation ; but the one 
hundred years, stretching from 1800 to 1900, certainly 
register the high-water mark of human development, and 
record the sublimest triumph of divine intention. From 
the rise and fall of Napoleon to the regnant supremacy of 
the people, the Nineteenth Century marched steadily on 
through effort to accomplishment, and, in all departments 
of human effort and human achievement, proved its right 
to be esteemed, in every sense, the "Wonderful Century." 

If, in attempting to tell, briefly and generally, the story 
of the Nineteenth Century I have fallen short in the rec- 
ord, or have been hampered by an impossible adjustment 
of the overabundance of material to the limitations of space, 
I shall still be satisfied if I may lead my readers to investi- 
gate and study more closely the remarkable happenings of 
the one hundred years of progress that are here imperfectly 
set down. 

This one thing any story of the Nineteenth Century, 

S 



6 PREFACE. 

whether briefly or bulkily told, must show : Progress, — 
progress in government, in literature, in law, in science, 
art, and the methods of application ; progress, especially, 
in human affairs and in the elevation and freedom of man. 

"The fact of our time which overshadows all others," 
says Benjamin Kidd, "is the arrival of Democracy." As a 
true democracy is the soul of progress, so this story of the 
Nineteenth Century has aimed to associate the growth of 
intelligence with the development of the people, and the 
triumphs of invention with the gradual " uplift " of mankind. 

In the hope that this rapid survey of the world's ad- 
vancement since the days when Franklin foresaw so clearly 
the triumphs of human endeavor, and Washington saw as 
clearly the possibilities of independence, may lead all who 
read it to appreciate the fact that in spite of suspicion and 
selfishness, in spite of evil and error, the world is ever 
growing better, and that divine purpose never takes a 
backward step, the author dedicates his story to all lovers 
of humanity, liberty, and equality, and especially to that 
great English-speaking race which, if true to its own tradi- 
tions, is, as one student of development declares, " destined 
to play an immense part in the immediate future of the 
world." 

"Whenever I meditate upon government," says Rousseau, 
" I am happy to find in my investigations new reasons for 
loving that of my own country." 

May that loyalty to their own homeland be the possession 
of all who honor these pages with their attention. 

ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS. 
Boston, March 15, 1900. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Chap. I. How the Century Began 13 

First Period. The Age of Napoleon. 

Chap. II. When One Man Strove to Master the World . . . 31 
Chap. III. The Grip of " The Man on Horseback " .... 47 

Second Period. The Age of Wellington. 

Chap. IV. How Napoleon's Star Set at Last 65 

Chap. V. How the Desire for Independence Grew .... 81 

Third Period. The Age of Bolivar. 

Chap. VI. How the First Quarter Ended 99 

Chap. VII. When the World Grew in Manliness ..... 119 

Fourth Period. The Age of Jackson. 

Chap. VIII. How the World had a New Shaking up . . . . 133 
Chap. IX. What " Old Hickory " Helped to Accomplish . . 147 

Fifth Period. The Age of Kossuth. 

Chap. X. Why the People grew Restless 165 

Chap. XL How All the World had another Shaking up . . . 182 

Sixth Period. The Age of Cavour. 

Chap. XII. On the Portal of the Future 201 

Chap. XIII. How One Man Liberated a Nation 220 

Seventh Period. The Age of Lincoln. 

Chap. XIV. How Another Man Enfranchised a Race .... 239 
Chap. XV. How Liberty and Union came in more lands than 

One 260 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

Eighth Period. The Age of Bismarck. pagb 

Chap. XVI. When the World Readjusted Itself 279 

Chap. XVII. The Last " One-Man Power " of the Century . . 297 

Ninth Period. The Age of Tolstoi. 

Chap. XVIII. How the World began to Try the Golden Rule . 313 

Chap. XIX. How the Nations Extended Their Influence . . 326 

Tenth Period. The Age of Edison. 

Chap. XX. When Men began to Prove the Value of Things . 345 

Chap. XXI. How the Century Closed 362 

Chronological Record of the Nineteenth Century . . . 385 

Index 397 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



The First Telegram Frontispiece. 

AUSTERLITZ AND NAPOLEON faces 46 

Waterloo and Wellington " 80 

Types of the Age of Bolivar " 116 

Types of the Age of Jackson " 146 

Types of the Age of Kossuth " 182 

Types of the Age of Cavour " 220 

Abraham Lincoln " 260 

Sedan and Bismarck j " 296 

Types of the Age of Tolstoi " 326 

Types of the Age of Edison " 362 



THE STORY OF 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



"A century of analysis and reve- 
lation which has reduced the size of 
the world, and the width of the 
oceans ; a century of federatioji and 
of brotherly love which lias bound 
■men closer and closer together" 
Edward Everett Hale. 



TO THE CENTURIES: 

' ' / am the Century the Nineteenth from Christ ! 
And though I guarded well thy treasures rare, — 
Inheritance unequalled and unpriced, 
For me the day's appointed task sxifficed, 
To lighten and to ease the lot of man. 
From elemental strongholds I enticed 
Strange Titans hidden since the world began; 
Now, God's best creature wields them, subject to his plan. 

" / am the Century the Nineteenth from Christ ! 
What goeth from us, is beyond recall; 
Yet unto every age there shall befall 
A revelation for its heart alone: 
Lo 1 I have kept my Weak Ones from the wall, 
And to my Strong their feebleness have shown; 
The letter fades apace — the spirit must atone 1 " 

Edith Matilda Thomas. 
From the " Critic " for December, i8gg. 



THE 

STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

CHAPTER I. 

HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. 

OF all the centuries that have passed since Christ was 
born at Bethlehem the Nineteenth Century has been 
the best, the greatest, the most wonderful. And this is 
as it should be ; for Christianity, sprung from that lowly 
manger at Bethlehem, means unrest, unrest means effort, 
effort means achievement, achievement means progress, 
and progress is the one thing that has made the Nine- 
teenth Century the greatest one hundred years since first 
the world began swinging in space, countless ages ago. 
Read with me, I pray you, the Story of the Nineteenth 
Century. 

When the Nineteenth Century was born the world was 
in a restless state ; the great family of nations was dis- 
turbed by new ideas and new desires. That half of the 
globe known as the New World — because, though the old- 
est half geologically, it was the newest politically — had, in 
the last quarter of the Eighteenth Century set a new lesson 
for the rest of the world to learn : the lesson of man's 
independence, the power of the people, and the equal right 
of all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

13 



14 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

To set this lesson so that all the world might read, a 
few thousand patriots — a fraction only of the three million 
colonists along the Atlantic coast of North America — had 
struggled through years^of protest, privation, determination, 
and battle, until success had been won, a nation of free- 
men established, and the world aroused to the knowledge 
of individual liberty and national independence. 

In America, when the Nineteenth Century opened, the 
greatest of Americans and the noblest of men had just 
closed his honorable and glorious career. George Wash- 
ington was dead. In France a marvellous man was just 
entering upon a career of greatness that was to rouse the 
world to wonder, set all Europe by the ears, and make its 
map anew. Napoleon Bonaparte was First Consul of France, 
and from a poor Corsican lieutenant of artillery had already 
become the dictator of Europe. 

Because of George Washington and American indepen- 
dence, came Napoleon Bonaparte and European enlighten- 
ment. Success in America meant desire across the seas. 

In cruel fashion and in poorly planned endeavor France 
had cast off the tyranny of centuries and established the 
French Republic, with the glorious motto, " Liberty, 
Equality, and Fraternity." Other nations, long bowed 
beneath a like tyranny of kings and princes and privileged 
classes wrongly called " Nobles," saw the success of Amer- 
ica and the effort of France, and longed to be their own 
masters and rulers. The people were beginning to bravely 
think rather than to blindly obey. 

But desire does not always yield right methods. There 
is a right and a wrong way to attain results. America had 
taken the right way ; France had followed the wrong. So 



HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. 1 5 

the terrible spectacle of France's wrong way of doing a 
right thing had saddened, terrified, and sobered Europe, 
and had led her people to make haste slowly, uncertain 
whether it were wise to attempt to walk the path of liberty 
if that way led, as it had in France, through blood and 
terror, or to exchange a thousand tyrants for one relentless 
despot and continual war. Washington's greatness seemed 
well-nigh overshadowed by Napoleon's selfishness. 

And yet Napoleon's selfishness had not been valueless to 
the world. It had aroused where it had antagonized, and 
rebuilt where it had overthrown. The American Revolu- 
tion and the French Revolution had set the people to 
thinking. The greatness of Washington and the triumphs 
of Napoleon had shown men how, in the words of St. Paul, 
God had chosen "the weak things of the world to confound 
the things that are mighty ; and the things which are 
despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, 
to bring to naught things that are." For George Wash- 
ington was but a plain Virginia farmer, and Napoleon 
Bonaparte the son of a Corsican lawyer ; and those two 
men remade the world of 1800. 

Of Washington, Green, the historian of the English 
people, has declared, " No nobler figure ever stood in the 
fore-front of a nation's life " ; while Napoleon Bonaparte, 
by the very selfishness of his ambitions, destroyed old 
tyrannies, threw the vigor of endeavor into conquered 
peoples, and awoke, especially in Germany, that spirit of 
patriotism and union that finally led to his own overthrow, 
and the development of a new Europe. 

The times indeed were ripe for this making of a new 
Europe, a new America, and a new world. Even in the 



1 6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

midst of wars and rumors of wars, men, thrown on their 
own resources or stirred to think out new ways of doing 
things along other than pohtical hnes, were blessing the 
world with the hints toward the very things that were to 
make the Nineteenth Century so great. 

When Benjamin Franklin, the prophet of industrial 
America, came, in 1790, to the end of his long, useful, 
and helpful life, he said, " I have sometimes almost wished 
it had been my destiny to be born two or three centuries 
hence. For invention and improvement are prolific, and 
beget more of their kind. The present progress is rapid. 
Many things of great importance, now unthought of, will, 
before that period, be produced ; and then I might not 
only enjoy their advantages, but have my curiosity satisfied 
in knowing what they are to be." 

That was the wonderful old man's prophecy and regret 
in the closing years of the eighteenth century ; think now, 
what the opening years of the twentieth century show as 
the result of the advancing thought of the nineteenth ! 
" Many things of great importance will be produced," said 
Frankhn ; suppose he could revisit the earth to-day, and 
see how his prophecy was realized within less than one 
hundred years of its utterance, and how the things that 
we accept as ordinary and commonplace are almost like 
some great magician's miracle compared to the things that 
Franklin knew, — hydraulic mining, the modern battleship, 
the telephone, electric lighting, and wireless telegraphy, the 
X-rays, and modern machinery ! 

The Nineteenth Century opened with some of these 
things "in the air." An English engineer and machinist, 
named Joseph Bramah, had already invented the remark- 



HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. 1/ 

able safety-lock and powerful hydraulic press that still bear 
his name ; he also invented a printing-press for banknotes, 
a machine for sawing stone, and he lost his life in devising 
a contrivance for uprooting tree-trunks. Illuminating gas 
was in use for lighting a few buildings in England and 
France ; Claude Chappe, a Frenchman of Normandy, had 
devised a sort of telegraphing by signal posts, so that a 
message could be sent one hundred and fifty miles in a 
quarter of an hour ; William Herschel, an English music 
teacher, had made some wonderful improvements in tele- 
scopes ; and Laplace, a French professor of mathematics, 
had made some startling astronomical discoveries ; an 
Italian professor, named Luigi Galvani, while skinning 
frogs' legs to make soup for his sick wife, had discovered 
the electrical currents which led to the development of 
galvanism ; and, about the same time, another Italian pro- 
fessor, named Alessandro Volta, also by noticing the mus- 
cular twitching of a frog, studied out his theory of electrical 
motion, from which came the voltaic pile or battery, known 
to us now as "volts." In 1800, Dr. Edward Jenner, an 
English physician, had introduced vaccination as a preven- 
tion of the dreaded small-pox; two brothers of central 
France, named Montgolfier, had discovered and attempted 
the possibility of air-travel by inflated balloons ; a Bohemian 
play-writer and printer, named Alois Senefelder, while try- 
ing to make out a washerwoman's bill for his mother 
without ink or paper, discovered the art of writing on 
stone — lithography, now so wonderful in its productions; a 
French refugee to America, Marc Brunei, had introduced 
machinery into ship-building ; and an English chemist, 
named John Dalton, had revolutionized chemical knowledge 



1 8 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

and method by his discovery that all chemical combinations 
were not between the chemical compounds, but between 
the beginnings or bases of those compounds — the units 
or atoms to which they could be reduced ; this great dis- 
covery was called the atomic theory. And in America, 
Eli Whitney had made the South, and ruined himself, by 
his invention of the cotton-gin. 

Those were but a few of the discoveries the world was 
making or putting to practical use when the Nineteenth 
Century began. They were simply the developments, or 
following out of, the thoughts and experiments that Ben- 
jamin Franklin and other great thinkers before him had 
dimly conceived or openly advocated ; indeed, certain of 
these modern discoveries had been known to the older 
nations or to those which, when the Nineteenth Century 
opened, had fallen again into darkness and ignorance, or 
were selfishly keeping to themselves, desiring no communi- 
cation with what they called " the barbarians of the outside 
world." Chief among this latter class of isolated peoples 
was the great empire of China. 

Bordering the western shore of the broad Pacific ; with a 
vast territory and a vaster population ; with a literature, 
arts, science, and inventions stretching back far beyond 
the time of Christ, China, known to our remote forefathers 
' of the time of Columbus as Cathay, had, for centuries, 
drawn about herself a wall of isolation and seclusion as for- 
bidding as the great stone wall with which the Emperor 
Che-Hwang-te had, two hundred years before Christ, en- 
circled his great dominions. Dominated and ruled by its 
Tartar dynasty for over two hundred years it still kept so 
completely to itself that even in the year 1 800 it was but 



HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. I9 

little known to the people of Europe or America save as, 
under severe restrictions, trading-vessels would now and 
then enter one of its well-guarded ports. 

Japan, the island empire lying to the north and east of 
China was, likewise, a sealed book to the western world, as, 
indeed, were most of those far-reaching lands of the eastern 
hemisphere known as the Orient. India, Persia, and Afghan- 
istan were other hermit nations ; Asia Minor was sunk in 
degradation ; indeed, the very cradle of the progress and 
civilization of the world had stopped rocking ; for the lands 
from which, in distant ages, what is known as the Aryan peo- 
ple had migrated westward, and given to the world its first 
advance along the path of progress ; from whom, too, came 
those germs of civilization which, carried through Greece 
into Europe, gave religion, philosophy, literature, science, 
and art to man, were, when the Nineteenth Century began, 
buried in ignorance and sloth, ground down by tyranny 
and despotism, having made no step in the forward move- 
ment toward intelligence and civilization which had begun 
within its borders, and were, indeed, to remain thus lost 
and isolated until the influence of the west, begun by 
England in the south, by Russia in the north, and by 
America on its eastern borders, was to give it a lasting im- 
pulse, in an actual struggle for life and nationality, toward 
progress and enlightment. 

Of that great section of Eastern Europe familiar to us as 
Russia, but little was really known in 1800. Peter the 
Great had made the first forward movement for his bar- 
barous kingdom in the early years of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, and Catharine II., the German wife of another but 
most insignificant Peter, carried forward the might and 



20 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

progress which the Great Peter had begun. But she died 
just before the Nineteenth Century was born ; and only when 
Alexander and Napoleon were rivals for the supremacy of 
Europe did Russia really assume a place among the great 
and progressive powers of the world. 

In that mighty struggle all the nations of Europe had a 
part. In the clash many an ancient power went down. 
Switzerland, long the only republic in the world, lost her 
liberties ; so, too, did Venice, the glory of the Middle Ages ; 
so, indeed, did all Italy, from the Alps to Sicily ; while 
Spain and Portugal, Holland and Belgium, Denmark, Nor- 
way, and Sweden, fell under French control. Austria, proud 
and haughty under the domain of its Hapsburg emperors, 
only saved itself from ruin by a coalition with the French 
conqueror ; and the kingdom of Prussia, with all its large 
and small German duchies and principalities, was well-nigh 
swallowed in the vortex of war and dismemberment. 

Indeed, as the Nineteenth Century opened. Napoleon, 
fresh from his invasion of Egypt, was dreaming of univer- 
sal empire, and the great Mohammedan power known as the 
Turkish Empire, was already a tottering fabric, upheld 
only by the rival purposes of France and Russia. 

Upon Africa, that seat of earliest civilization, the black- 
ness of utter night had fallen. Where once, along the 
southern shores of the Mediterranean, Rome and Carthage 
had held sway, and learning and culture had their seat, 
only pirate states existed, demanding and enforcing tribute 
from the world, while Egypt, fallen into evil ways, had 
nothing but its ruins and its pyramids to tell of its ancient 
glory ; for even the vigor of its Ottoman conquerors 
seemed gone forever. Below the boundaries of the desert 



HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. 21 

wastes of Sahara, stretched a vast unexplored and unknown 
continent, the home of savage and warring tribes, drawn 
upon by the hunters of men for the victims of the horrible 
slave-trade, and more barbarous and brutal in their igno- 
rance than the roving red Indians of the American forests 
and prairies. 

These redmen of America, when the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury began, still occupied and dominated the largest portion 
of North America. The American Revolution had secured 
the independence of the United States, but the western 
portion of the new republic was a most uncertain and waver- 
ing line. In the year 1800 France still held most of the 
territory west of the Mississippi, under the name of Loui- 
siana. Spain owned certain territory east of the Missis- 
sippi, and south of the thirty-first parallel of latitude, under 
the name of Florida ; east and north of these boundaries, 
to the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes, lay the posses- 
sions of the United States of America, eight hundred 
and twenty-eight thousand square miles. The twentieth 
century opens with that area, on the continent alone, in- 
creased almost sevenfold, or over three and one-half mil- 
lion square miles, while the flag of the republic floats in 
possession over islands once crushed beneath the power of 
Spain. 

But in 1800 even the eight hundred thousand square 
miles of the United States were largely given up to Indian 
occupation ; for what is called the centre of population, or 
better, the " centre of gravity " of the population of the 
country, was but eighteen miles west of Baltimore, in 
Maryland. Only about three hundred and five thousand 
square miles of its territory were settled, and had a popu- 



22 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

lation of a little over four million. In 1900 the population 
has grown to more than eighty million. 

England claimed possession of all the North American 
continent north of the Great Lakes, with the exception of 
the extreme northwesterly corner, which was known as 
Russian America. To-day that "corner" is known as 
Alaska, a valuable territory of the United States. Spain 
owned all of the present domain of the United States west 
of Texas, and including Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana ; 
she possessed Mexico and Central America, and all the 
vast territory of South America from the Isthmus of 
Panama to Cape Horn, excepting Brazil, which belonged to 
little Portugal. 

So you see that the civilized United States in the year 
1800 occupied but a very small portion of the earth's sur- 
face, and had but a slight political influence. 

Their influence, in fact, was in ideas more than anything 
else. A new nation, they had undertaken a new problem, 
— the task of governing themselves. The young repubhc 
had a large area to develop ; it had no fear of its neigh- 
bors, as had every one of the rival states of Europe ; it had 
no desire for conquest, no need to waste its revenues in 
great armies or fleets of war ; no wish to do anything but 
to strengthen itself on its own soil by a career of peaceful 
industry. It had its own political differences, rivalries, and 
ambitions, but they were local rather than national. The 
spirit of union was voiced in the song of " Hail, Columbia ; " 
and, though the Republic had great sympathy for the 
experiment of popular liberty in France, yet when France 
sought to trade upon its sympathies, and embroil the United 
States in the foreign and domestic troubles of France, the 



HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. 23 

Republic said, " No ! that is none of my business," and was 
ready to arm itself against the arrogant demands of France 
for money for its needs. " We helped you ; help us ! " 
said France ; and then came, in reply to the demand for 
"blackmail," the noble sentiment of Pinckney, the Ameri- 
can envoy to France : " Millions for defence, but not one 
cent for tribute ! " 

While the freemen of America were gradually feeling 
their way westward to the savage borders of their own 
domain, the adventurers of the world were following along 
the paths of discovery, and setting inquisitive feet upon the 
islands of the sea. When the Nineteenth Century began 
the island-continents that now comprise the geographical 
division known as Australasia were unknown save to a few 
daring navigators, and unoccupied save by their native 
tribes. New Guinea, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, 
and the scattered archipelagoes that dot the western Pa- 
cific, were still practically unexplored. Spain and Portugal, 
France, Holland, and England, had for years voyaged, 
traded, and claimed possession in these Pacific waters as 
well as in what was known as the East Indies ; but actual 
occupation and colonization had been attempted only at 
few points, so that this vast stretch of fertile Pacific and 
Indian islands was practically unknown to civilization. In 
the great Indian peninsula, jutting out from southern Asia, 
England had, in 1800, obtained a considerable footing, 
thanks to the resistless energy of Clive ; but it was still a 
fierce struggle for possession between English governors 
and native princes in what Tennyson, later, called "wild 
Mahratta battle," and in no portion of the " uncivilized 
world," as Europeans arrogantly termed all vast stretches 



24 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

of native possessions, had the aggressive and wealth-seeking 
vi^hite man yet secured, when the Nineteenth Century 
opened, absolute or undisputed possession. 

The West India islands, in the Atlantic waters, were 
possibly an exception. Since the days of Columbus and 
his companions, these fertile tropic islands had been under 
the ever-changing control of Spain, Holland, England, and 
France ; and their rich harvests of sugar-cane and tobacco 
were building up a profitable " West India " trade. 

When the Nineteenth Century began, the world, as I 
have told you, and as you may see from this opening pic- 
ture, was in a turmoil. Unrest was the order of the day. 
The spirit of liberty, the desire for possession, the lust of 
adventure, of greed and of gain, were struggling for mas- 
tery. Change was in the air. Man, through three hun- 
dred years, had been slowly developing the three great 
inventions of the Middle Ages — the mariner's compass, 
gunpowder, and printing - — until, at last, civilization had 
applied them to its own practical and generally selfish 
uses. Wars, treaties, and revolutions, continuous and 
interminable, had resulted therefrom ; but this ceaseless 
upheaval was rapidly transforming the world, and making 
the way clear for the material, social, and intellectual devel- 
opment of the People who, in the Nineteenth Century, were 
to take affairs in hand, and lead the world to nobler heights 
of endeavor and achievement. 

In the year 1800 all Europe was at war. That was 
nothing new. Europe had forever been at war since 
the early days of Aryan immigration had led to the days of 
Roman dominion and power. But the wars that ushered 
in the Nineteenth Century were far different from those 



HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. 25 

that had gone before. Now the people were rising, and 
the quarrels of individual rulers or of rival races gave place 
to the struggle for independence and manhood. 

To think and to reason ! — the development of these 
faculties in man was the impulse toward independence. 

" 'Tis education forms the common mind, 
Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined," 

wrote one of the great EngHsh poets of the eighteenth 
century ; and just as that eighteenth century was drawing 
to a close, George Washington said to his countrymen in 
his famous " Farewell Address," "Promote, as an object of 
primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of 
knowledge. In proportion as the structure of government 
gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public 
opinion should be enlightened." 

This means that the stupid man is content to be a slave ; 
but that liberty, which is founded on law, is possible only 
to the man who thinks, intelligently. 

For centuries learning and literature had been possible 
only to a comparatively small portion of the people. Edu- 
cation indeed had slumbered far beyond the night of the 
dark ages, as the times of grossest ignorance were called ; 
and not until the latter part of the eighteenth century did 
the people begin to desire to really know something. Such 
men as Comenius the Moravian, and Hermann Francke the 
German, and John Locke the Englishman, had laid the 
foundations upon which Rousseau and Basedow and Pesta- 
lozzi reared their systems of education, and prepared the 
way for the wonderful educational developments of the 
Nineteenth Century. But in 1800 these systems were only 



^6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

in process of formation, and the education of the chil- 
dren of the world was slight and small. Prussia had, 
perhaps, the best system of education ; but, throughout the 
world, the uneducated were in a vast majority. Nearly 
sixty per cent of the people of England were unable to 
write their names, and in all the kingdom there were but 
three thousand schools, public and private. The United 
States had been too busy in setting up housekeeping to 
attend school — and what schools they had were few and 
poor. France was even worse off ; for her bloody revolu- 
tion had left no time for education. Italy and Spain were 
fearfully ignorant ; Austria and Russia were positively 
uneducated ; and while in China and India children had 
always gone to school, instruction, as in all oriental coun- 
tries, was confined to the simplest moral teaching ; and 
Hottentot and Bushman, knowing nothing but how to eat 
and shoot and sleep, were not so very far below the children 
of the people in most parts of what was then called the 
civilized world. 

Literature — the knowledge and reading of books — 
was confined to even smaller limits than was education. 
Great names were known to the world of letters ; but that 
world was very small in comparison to the real globe, or 
even to the real people of a nation. Doctor Samuel John- 
son was the great name in England ; the " Times " had 
just begun publication in London ; Goethe was the fore- 
most writer of Germany, and Rousseau the most popular 
in France ; Robert Burns was the one man who was touch- 
ing the heart of the people with his simple lays ; Moore and 
Byron were scarcely more than boys ; Schiller, Schlegel, 
Schelling, and Humboldt were the representatives of Ger- 



HOW THE CENTURY BEGAN. 2/ 

man thought and culture, as Derzhavin the poet, Karamzen 
the historian, and Kriloff the story-teller were in the van 
of Russia's slow growth in literature. Pushkin, the 
greatest of Russian poets, was a year-old baby when the 
Nineteenth Century began ; Alfieri and Parini were the great 
names in Itahan literature, while Spain had fallen sadly 
from the " golden age " of Cervantes and Lope de Vega of 
tvv^o centuries before. In America, too, the American 
book was, as yet, a dull and uninviting affair ; there was 
little done in literature, for, so busy were our grandfathers 
and great grandfathers in setting their new nation on its 
feet, that they found no time for "book larnin','' and, as 
Lowell, in later days, declared, 

" They stole Englishmen's books and thought Englishmen's thought, 
With English salt on her tail our wild eagle was caught." 

But in 1800 Washington Irving was a boy of thir- 
teen, and " the father of American Literature " was stor- 
ing up the material that was to awaken the creative 
thought of his native land. Cooper, too, was but a boy of 
ten. Bryant was not yet six, and Fitz-Greene Halleck 
had scarcely got into jackets. There had, as yet, come no 
gleam from the land of Washington of the light that was 
to stream across the ocean, and make the America of the 
last half of the Nineteenth Century a great book-reading 
and book-making nation. 

So, after centuries of gradual growth and of barbarism 
and semi-civilization, the world stood at the opening of 
the Nineteenth Christian Century, not yet truly Christian- 
ized, civilized, or progressive. Through all those centuries 
the people had slowly but surely been rising out of degrada- 



28 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

tion into a knowledge of their own manhood and their own 
power, until, through blood and tears, through sorrow and 
suffering, through dawning self-knowledge and awakening 
intelligence, the world had come to that day of strife and 
turmoil and general unrest, out of which must come either 
still blacker darkness or the sunlight of the newborn day. 



" The representative Jiiaii of tfie 
transition epoch which teshered in 
the Nineteenth Century — the most 
tumuliuotts and yet the most fruit- 
ful in the world's history." 

Williant Milligan Sloane. 



THE AGE OF NAPOLEON. 

Imperialism. 

{1800-1810.) 



NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 

EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH, 
Born Ajaccio, Corsica, Aug'. 15, i^bq. 
Died St. Helena Island, May 3, 1821. 



CHAPTER II. 

WHEN ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 
(From 1800 to 180^.) 

THE Nineteenth Century has been famous for surmount- 
ing obstacles. The ingenuity of man has never been 
more courageously shown or magnificently demonstrated. 
And the lesson of contempt for obstacles was set by Napo- 
leon Bonaparte in the year 1800. 

Returning home after an unsuccessful campaign in 
Egypt, where he had gone with a glittering but unpractical 
dream of oriental conquest, he found France in a miserable 
condition, torn by political dissensions and weakened by 
the defeats of its armies. Napoleon settled the first by 
making himself Consul and head of the state ; he put an 
end to the second by leading an army over the Alps and 
conquering Italy. With an audacity as reckless as it was 
successful he won the battle of Marengo, forced the 
treaties of Luneville and Amiens, gave France a new and 
strong government, and, for the first time in many years, 
brought peace. to Europe and the world. This was in 
1802. In 1806 he declared himself King of Italy and 
Hereditary Emperor of France; and, once again in the 
history of the world, the dream of the people — "the 
republic one and indivisible " — seemed shattered forever. 

But it was not so. Napoleon himself had shown the 
world what a man of the people could accomplish. The 

31 



32 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

very success of his ambitions and his tyranny had strength- 
ened the faith of the people in their own abilities, while 
the success of the greatest of modern dictators was, as we 
shall see, only temporary. The day of the one-man power 
was to be but brief ; the power of the people was coming 
on slowly, but surely and mightily. 

The success of Napoleon was the first step toward his 
downfall. It aroused inveterate enemies in all parts of the 
world. The lovers of liberty called him the assassin ; the 
partisans of aristocracy and personal power combined for 
the overthrow of this little Corsican, whom they declared 
an upstart and a usurper. 

But, before the downfall came. Napoleon Bonaparte was 
to scale the dizziest heights of his ambition. Guardian 
and guide of France, for good or for evil, dictator and 
master of Europe, the influence and power of the " Little 
Corporal," as his soldiers loved to call him, was far-reach- 
ing — it was, indeed, even in the earliest years of the 
Nineteenth Century, world-wide. Europe acknowledged it 
from the straits of Gibraltar to the North Sea, and agreed 
to the Treaty of Luneville, and the Peace of Amiens, in 
1801 ; Asia and the islands of the Pacific knew it when 
those same treaties rearranged the possessions of European 
power in the far east and brought a change of masters ; 
Africa felt it when, with the withdrawal of French and 
English combatants, Mehemet Ali, the Albanian tobacco 
merchant, rose to the supreme power in Egypt ; and 
America recognized it when, in 1 800, Napoleon, First Con- 
sul, put a stop to the useless naval war between France 
and the United States, and later, in 1803, sold to the 
republic, for fifteen millions of dollars, the vast stretch of 



ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 33 

western territory known as Louisiana, and thus opened the 
door for the marvellous growth of America beyond the 
Mississippi. 

Across his highway to universal dominion, the goal of 
the mighty ambitions of this young conqueror of thirty- 
three, England stood as the only obstacle — the lion in his 
path. She had half a million trained fighting-men and a 
navy that was well-nigh invincible. Her foremost man 
and mightiest leader was William Pitt the younger, the 
great son of an even greater father. For one hundred 
years England and Scotland had been united under the 
name of Great Britain ; and the Union Jack, made from 
the combined crowns of St. George and St. Andrew, had 
been the national flag of the united kingdoms — " the 
meteor flag of England," one of the British poets of that 
day called it, as he proclaimed its invincibleness : — 

"The meteor flag of England 
Shall yet terrific burn; 
Till danger's troubled night depart, 
And the star of peace return." 

"Danger's troubled night " had by no means departed, 
even though, in 1801, the "star of peace " seemed for a 
brief time to have returned. On the second day of July, 
1800, thanks to the effort of the great Pitt, a legislative 
union had also been formed between Great Britain and her 
restless western island dependency of Ireland. On Janu- 
ary 22, 1 801, the first imperial parliament of what has ever 
since been termed " the United Kingdom of Great Britain 
and Ireland" met in London; the shadowy semblance of 
liberty known as "the national independence of Ireland" 



34 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

was lost to the never really independent " Emerald Isle ; " 
but when Pitt, who, by this union and his opposition to 
Napoleon, hoped to make Great Britain the controlling in- 
fluence in Europe, sought, by a concession to the Roman 
Catholics, who had long been debarred from political power, 
to weld the men of the united kingdom more firmly to- 
gether, the king of England refused to make this liberal 
advance, and the great minister resigned his office. 

This stubborn, though conscientious, king of England 
was that same George the Third who had as obstinately 
held out against the prayers and protests of his American 
colonists and their English sympathizers, and had thus 
brought about the Declaration of Independence in i y'j6, 
and the final triumph and absolute independence of the 
United States in 1783. As he lost America when the 
eighteenth century was drawing to its close, so, again, when 
the Nineteenth Century was opening, he refused the wise 
counsels of Pitt, and, by his obstinacy and hatred of liberty, 
might have irretrievably crippled England had not the peo- 
ple of England shown more common sense than their big- 
oted and slow-witted king. An honest and well-intentioned 
old gentleman was George the Third, king of England ; 
but he hated anything approaching popular independence 
and freedom of thought or action, and could never really 
see beyond his own short but honest Hanoverian nose. 

It became necessary, soon, for men of action to look 
much farther than King George's nose. The peace of 
Europe, secured by England's advances and by Napoleon's 
shrewdness, was seen by all thinking men to be but a brief 
respite — "a peace," so one observer declared, "which 
everybody is glad of and nobody is proud of." Even stu- 



ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 35 

pid old King George saw this. " It is an experimental 
peace," he said, "nothing else. But it was unavoidable." 

So England, the lion in the path, stood in the way of 
Napoleon's ambition and a universal war. As for the 
newly-made Emperor of the French, it may be said that he 
used the brief respite to devote alike his iron will and his 
wonderful ability to the improvement of France, torn and 
wasted by years of revolution and of war. He restored 
religion and the Sabbath, equalized and reformed the taxes, 
beautified Paris, and improved the provinces by a system of 
public works, permitted the exiled royalists to return, and 
framed a system of just and uniform laws for France — 
the most enduring, so it is claimed, of all the achievements 
of Napoleon. 

Underneath all this peace-keeping and law-making, how- 
ever, lay the cherished ambitions of this remarkable Corsi- 
can. While strengthening his power and benefiting his 
people he was contemplating fhe conquest of all Europe, 
with himself — " Napoleon Imperateur ! " — victor, master, 
and ruler. 

But there was a fly in the amber. Before him, deter- 
mined and defiant, stood England, obstinate as King George 
himself. Her spirit irritated this would-be dictator, and he 
longed to see her crush-ed, and pushed out of his way. 

" Fifteen millions of people must give way to forty mil- 
lions," he declared, as he confidently compared his million 
fighting men and his army of allies against the half million 
fighting strength of Great Britain. 

Skilful and wise as a leader of men, and certain of his 
own strength. Napoleon began to prepare for what all men 
knew to be inevitable — the conflict with England. 



36 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

He cleared the decks for action in all possible ways. On 
both sides of the Atlantic his will as well as his agencies 
were at work ; for, while forcing alliances in Europe, he 
stirred up the Mahratta tribes of Central India against the 
English ; and having, by treaty, secured from Spain the 
vast tract of Louisiana in North America, he crippled 
the possible power of England in America by selling to 
the republic of the United States the whole of Louisiana 
(a territory embracing the present states of Louisiana, 
Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North and 
South Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma and the Indian Terri- 
tory, with goodly portions of Minnesota, Colorado, and 
Wyoming). 

The price that France, by the will of Napoleon, received 
from this vast land sale was but fifteen millions of dollars 
— a regular "bargain price," so it seems to us of to-day, 
who know the present resources of that wonderful western 
region. But money, just then, was no object to Napoleon, 
Emperor of the French. What he desired was to block 
the path of England. 

"This accession of territory by the United States," he 
declared, "establishes forever the power of the United 
States, and gives to England a maritime rival destined to 
humble her pride." J 

A good deal of a prophet was this undersized Emperor 
of the French ; even more astute and far-seeing than were 
many of those who profited by his hatred of England. 

Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States. 
The man whose hand drew up the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence could find no clause in the Constitution of the 
United States giving him the power to thus "expand" the 



ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 37 

territory of the republic by purchase or accession. As 
other presidents, however, have done since his day, he con- 
sented to the transfer because he believed it to be the will 
of the people. So the first experience of the United 
States in territorial expansion became fact ; patriots who 
feared for the republic for this " misconstruhig the Con- 
stitution " have long since been proven false prophets ; and 
to-day, after a century of ownership, "the purchase of 
Louisiana," so Dr. Edward Channing declares, "is shown to 
have been one of the most fortunate events in the history 
of the United States." 

Napoleon had shrewdly seen that if France retained 
Louisiana she would be a menace and rival to the United 
States, who would thus be forced into an alliance with 
England. "From the day that France takes possession of 
New Orleans," one American statesman had declared, 
" she becomes our mutual and habitual enemy. From that 
moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and 
nation." Napoleon saw this ; he quickly made Louisiana 
American by sale and annexation, and thus "put a spoke 
in England's wheel." 

Then he gathered, at Boulogne, a great fleet and army 
for the invasion of England. " Let us but be masters of 
the channel for six hours," he said, "and we are masters 
of the world." 

But the mastery of the English Channel was not to be 
secured by the navy of France : indeed, the " ruler of the 
waves " was not to be the self-made emperor of the French. 
England, who had already, by her victories at Brest and 
Aboukir, driven the tricolor flag from the sea, and ruined 
the foreign trade of France, was too formidable an adver- 



38 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

sary for Napoleon's uncertain fleets. The mariners of Eng- 
land were still the unconquered defenders of that island 
kingdom, of which her favorite poet, Campbell, had declared 

" Britannia needs no bulwarks, 
No towers along the steep ; 
Her march is o'er the mountain-waves, 
Her home is on the deep." 

And Napoleon, as had the Spaniards of the Armada in 
the days of "good Queen Bess," found Britannia very 
much "at home " when he called. 

In 1803 the short peace of the world was broken. 
England refused to give up the island of Malta in the 
Mediterranean, which Napoleon desired as a base of action 
for a possibly new invasion of Egypt and the east. An- 
gered at thus being thwarted. Napoleon made British obsti- 
nacy the cause of conflict. 

"Malta or war ! " he declared ; and, demanding the sup- 
port of his enforced allies of Spain, Holland, Switzerland, 
and Italy, he bent all his energies to the conquest of 
England, the recovery of Malta, and the victorious inva- 
sion of Egypt and the East. As the first step in this new 
career of conquest he commanded his fleets to rendezvous at 
Boulogne, that they might sweep the British from the 
waters of the channel, and clear the way for his armies to 
invade England. 

But England was ready. A great sailor was in com- 
mand of her navy, Horatio Nelson, admiral of the fleet and 
conqueror of the Nile. Napoleon, with his two thousand 
vessels and his invading army of one hundred and fifty 
thousand men, could neither decoy, break through, nor con- 



ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 39 

quer the channel fleet of England. He tried the first, un- 
successfully; for Nelson, led away with some of his battle- 
ships into the stern chase of a French fleet across the 
Atlantic, saw through the emperor's trick in the very nick 
of time, and, racing back again, got in just ahead of the 
allied French and Spanish fleet, and forced it back to the 
shelter of the French forts. He tried the second, unsuccess-. 
fully ; for he could not weaken the cordon of British battle- 
ships that guarded the Channel shores. He tried the third, 
unsuccessfully, for Nelson, chasing the allied fleets of France 
and Spain into Cadiz, lured the French admiral, Villeneuve, 
out to battle, by purposely weakening his own fleet, and 
then, closing in upon the French ships off the Cape of 
Trafalgar, he ran up on his flagship the famous signal, 
" England expects every man to do his duty," did his own 
gloriously by crushing the whole hostile fleet in a wonder- 
ful sea-fight, and then fell, mortally wounded, in the very 
hour of victory. 

This remarkable sea triumph was won by England on 
the twenty-first of October, 1805. It broke forever the 
naval power of France, overthrew all Napoleon's deep- 
laid plans for the invasion and conquest of England, and 
turned his attention to the easier victory of the allied armies 
of Europe, which were already gathering to crush the great 
commander. 

At the close of the year 1805 Russia, England, Austria, 
and Sweden stood united for this endeavor. Ranged on 
the side of France were Spain, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, 
Prussia, and the smaller German states, mostly unwilling 
allies, but cowed into union by the master power of Napo- 
leon. England, still guarding her own boundaries from 



40 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 

invasion, furnished the money to back up the fight to which 
Austria and Russia marched with mighty armies — at least 
three hundred thousand men. Once again the world was 
in the full sweep of terrible war. 

The peace and war which Napoleon could so easily force 
as his needs or his desires dictated, again, as in the case of 
his earlier triumphs, affected, either directly or indirectly, 
the whole civilized world. 

In India the "wild Mahratta battle," of which Tennyson 
speaks in " Locksley Hall," and which had been fanned into 
fury by the "seeking on " of France, raged hotly until tri- 
umphantly closed in 1 803 by the intrepid English general 
Wellesley, afterwards made famous under his title of Wel- 
lington ; on either side of the globe possessions changed 
hand, by conflict or treaty : as when the Danish West Indies 
were captured by the British in 1801 ; the French recap- 
turing from the British their possessions on the West Afri- 
can coast ; Egypt, evacuated by its British holders after 
the peace of Amiens ; and the Dutch given again, in 1 803, 
their far-off African colony at the Cape of Good Hope, to 
be, for a hundred years, the bone of contention as Dutch 
and English, Boer and Briton, struggled for South African 
supremacy. 

These were but a few of the changes witnessed during 
the first five years of the Nineteenth Century, when, by the 
restless energy of one indomitable man, the whole world 
seemed shifting positions in a great international game of 
"stage-coach." 

In Europe the old " Holy Roman Empire " — never really 
Roman and always far from holy — was forever abolished ; 
Switzerland and North Italy were made into a chain of 



ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 4 1 

republics ; Germany was shuffled like a pack of cards till 
few could tell just where or what the German boundaries 
were ; Italy became all French, or was dominated by 
France ; and, of the forty-eight free imperial cities of Ger- 
many, only six retained their ancient rights. As France, 
fattening with conquest, swelled itself across the Rhine, 
Portugal, worsted in a vain conflict with Spain, and backed 
up by France, found herself shorn of provinces at home 
and colonies in South America ; while, of all Europe, no 
state, in 1805, found itself untouched or unchanged save 
Russia and England. 

In Russia a new czar had come to the throne, — Alex- 
ander the First, — destined to be a prominent figure in 
Europe's troubled story. And, in England, the never- 
absent spark of Irish rebellion fanned itself into a flame in 
1803, when Robert Emmet, urged on by Napoleon's half 
promises, headed a revolt that came to speedy grief, cost- 
ing the young Irish patriot his life, and giving to the world 
a famous speech and yet more famous poem. That poem 
is, indeed, one of the most pathetic of the tender "melo- 
dies " of Thomas Moore : 

" Oh 1 breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade, 
Where cold and unhonored his relics are laid; 
Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed, 
As the night dew that falls on the grass o'er his head I 

- But the night dew that falls, though in silence it weeps, 
Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps ; 
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls, 
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls." 

Everywhere throughout the world, where the story of 
American liberty and the French overthrow of kings had 



42 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

spread, this desire for independence that cost Emmet his 
life was stirring uneasily in these opening years of the 
Nineteenth Century. From the Gulf of Mexico to Cape 
Horn the sullen submission which for three centuries the 
enslaved people of South America had yielded to cruel and 
selfish Spain was smouldering in discontent ; and the val- 
ley of the Mississippi opened by Napoleon's shrewd " spoke 
in England's wheel," to the hand and ownership of Ameri- 
can pioneers, took on a new life of energy and endeavor. 
Poland, dismembered by the greedy powers of Russia, 
Prussia, and Austria, recognized in Napoleon a possible 
liberator, and stretched out to him appealing hands ; in 
Canada, the national antagonism between French and Eng- 
lish seemed ready to break into open trouble, while Greece, 
that ancient home of liberty, chafing under its subjection 
to a horde of Asiatic aliens, felt the dawning inspiration 
of independence, and awoke to a new vision of reviving its 
old nationality. 

How much the vigor of America in the Mediterranean 
aroused the downtrodden patriots of Europe to a sense of 
what a free nation may accomplish, it is not possible to 
say; but certainly the appearance of the victorious flag of 
the young western republic floating above the conquered 
strongholds of African despotism must have been an in- 
spiring as it was an unusual sight. 

For years the nations that traded along the shores of 
the Mediterranean had been at the mercy of a piratical 
confederation, known as the " Barbary Powers," because 
they included a line of vassal states founded by a terrible 
Turkish pirate named Barbarrossa in the sixteenth century. 
Wars and troubles at home had kept the civilized and com- 



ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 43 

mercial states of Europe from breaking up this nest of 
African pirates, though now and then some state, stung to 
madness by the depredations of these sea-thieves upon her 
commerce, would swoop down upon their ports to punish 
their sea-crimes. For the most part, however, European 
traders thought it more prudent to purchase the freedom of 
entrance into and safe saihng over the Mediterranean by- 
concession or tribute than to use the war-ships and sailors 
needed elsewhere. So, for years, the Barbary pirates fat- 
tened on tribute, presents, or booty, playing off the rivalries 
of France and England against each other, and proving 
themselves the highwaymen and scourge of the Mediter- 
ranean waters. 

Into this disgraceful connivance with crime the United 
States, too, had been forced by the exigencies of its slender 
commerce and the weakness of its navy. But when, in 
1800, Captain Bainbridge of the United States frigate 
"Washington " stoutly withstood the arbitrary demands of 
the Algerian dey, and when, following this, the pasha of 
Tripoli demanded an increase of tribute, and, upon its re- 
fusal, hewed down the flagstaff before the American con- 
sulate. Congress acted at once, and despatched an American 
squadron to punish the Barbary pirates. This was done so 
effectually under the leadership of such American naval 
heroes as Preble and Decatur, Bainbridge and Truxton, 
Rodgers and Dale, that an effectual stop was put to this 
shameful tribute to piracy ; and the laurels won by the 
American navy gave to it a value that was recognized, for 
the first time, by the powers of Europe, and was made 
apparent to those critics at home who would cast discredit 
on American enterprise abroad — as home critics of Ameri- 



44 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

can enterprise there have ever been, from the days of Wash- 
ington to those of McKinley. 

America indeed — or the repubhc of the United States, 
rather, to which has been given pre-eminently the title of 
America — was just at that time in a critical mood. The 
government under the Constitution had become already a 
subject for party dispute and political rancor, and the chief 
duty of the American presidents seemed to be to keep the 
republic out of the wars and brawls into which hot heads 
and French intriguers would have forced it. John Adams 
saved it from a needless war with France ; Jefferson kept 
it from embroiling itself in European complications ; and 
both these men, though bitter in an unsparing rivalry, 
sought to follow the wise advice of Washington, and " steer 
clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign 
world." 

"Why," asked Washington, "should we quit our own to 
stand upon foreign ground ? Why, by interweaving our 
destiny with that of any part of Europe, should we entangle 
our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, 
rivalship, interest, humor, and caprice.''" 

It was along this careful course that both Adams the 
Federalist and Jefferson the Democrat sought to steer the 
ship of the Union, just launched upon the sea of National 
Independence ; and, in spite of party strife and political 
passion, this policy, so necessary to a new and united 
nation, kept the republic from wasting war, through the 
opening years of a warlike country, and set itself to the 
development of a continent fruitful of marvellous possi- 
bilities. 

These possibilities were only beginning to be appreciated. 



ONE MAN STROVE TO MASTER THE WORLD. 45 

So little did the Atlantic States know of the value of the 
Louisiana purchase that certain " statesmen " suggested 
the sale of the annexed acres to some "friendly power." 
The Northwest, only partially won from savage Indians 
and wandering traders, was almost an unexplored region, 
and slow methods of communication kept even the sections 
of the settled East from intimate acquaintance and asso- 
ciation. 

Steam navigation on land and water were still but un- 
formed and impracticable schemes in the busy brains of 
inventors; electricity had not yet even begun its marvellous 
race with time, and postal facilities were- scarcely facilities 
at all. Savings banks were not inaugurated in England 
until 1804, and the social conditions of England were such 
as even Englishmen in 1900 can have scarce a conception of. 

England, the most enlightened of civilized countries, was 
in so low a social condition that her working-people were 
little better than slaves, and her laws seemed made only 
for those who owned the land ; two hundred and twenty- 
three crimes or breaches of law were punished with the 
death-penalty, while prisoners, chained outside the prison- 
gate, begged from the passers-by ; discipline in the army 
and navy was largely maintained by the whip ; and the in- 
dustries of the land were carried forward only by the most 
exhausting labor, and with the most primitive tools. 

If this was the case with England, what must have been 
the condition of the rest of the world when all Europe was 
girding itself for war, and Napoleon Bonaparte seated him- 
self upon a throne ? 

That world was little better than a vast slave-pen. The 
Russian peasants were serfs ; so, too, were nearly all those 



46 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

of Austria and Prussia. Women and children worked in 
coal-pits, harnessed to wagons or weighed down with bas- 
kets, forgotten by the law, while morality was as low as 
manners were coarse and brutal, and all the world de- 
manded not only peace, but reform. 

The time for both these blessings was not yet ripe. 
Indeed, it needed still wider and more wasting wars to 
awaken good men to see the needs of their brethren, and 
find a way to meet them ; for war, after all, is what has 
brought the nations closer to each other than ever has a 
do-nothing peace, and war was to come with a vengeance. 

For when, by Nelson's victory at Trafalgar in October, 
1805, the emperor of the French was forced to give up 
forever his dream of the conquest of England, and to yield 
his supremacy on the sea, he turned all his masterly 
genius, and all his terrible powers of concentration, against 
his enemies on land. At the head of a vast army of 
Frenchmen and their allies, he hurled himself on the great 
wall of armed men which Russia and Austria, with the 
money help of England, had raised up against him, and set 
himself to break, scatter, and destroy what is now known 
in history as the " third coalition against France." 




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CHAPTER III. 

TSE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 
{From i8o^ to 1810.) 

IT was literally to hurl himself against the forces of 
Russia and Austria, that Napoleon, emperor and sol- 
dier, marched across the French border in 1805. 

With a rapidity that was startling and a strategy that 
was baffling, he flung the veterans who followed his eagles, 
first against one power, and then against another. Austria, 
torn and crippled by his fierce assault, went down in de- 
feat at Ulm ; and Russia, confronted by this wonderful 
soldier, in what is known as "the battle of the Three 
Emperors " at Austerlitz, fled from the field in retreat, 
while, through the clouds, there burst upon the exultant 
Frenchmen that stream of light forever famous as "the 
Sun of Austerlitz." 

That sun shone full upon Napoleon with a blaze of glory. 
It displayed him as the foremost man of all the world, and, 
for a season, all the world bent in acknowledgment or sub- 
mission to this self-made master of men. The " third coah- 
tion " was shattered at a blow. Russia, defeated and flying, 
assented to one of those enforced treaties called a "mih- 
tary convention ; " Austria hastened to accept a truce ; 
and Napoleon's outstretched hand drew more "acquired" 
territory within the expanding boundaries of France. 

England, thus left alone, found even her money unavail- 

47 



48 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

able to purchase victories. The battle of Austerlitz re- 
made Europe ; for the peace of Pressburg, signed the day 
after Christmas, 1805, gave the most of the Christmas 
gifts to triumphant France, and made the brothers and 
sisters of Napoleon, almost in spite of themselves, kings, 
queens, or princes over dismembered Europe. 

" Roll up that map," said Pitt, the great English states- 
man, whom Napoleon had checkmated, as he pointed to 
the map of Europe hanging on the wall ; " it will not be 
wanted these ten years." And then he died, — " killed by 
Austerlitz," so the verdict ran. 

But the death of Pitt, which men felt to be England's 
greatest loss, proved in the end a blessing ; for rivals 
joined hands and parties united, to help England to the 
stand which Pitt desired her to take, — the main bulwark 
against the ambitions of Napoleon, — and thus to make 
true the noble declaration of Pitt after Trafalgar : " Eng- 
land has saved herself by her courage ; she will save 
Europe by her example." 

But for a while it seemed impossible to save Europe. 
Napoleon's triumph at Austerlitz had brought Europe to 
his feet ; he drew away all the smaller German states from 
Prussia by establishing what he called the " Confederation 
of the Rhine ;" and when Prussia, in despair, joined again 
with Russia and England in the Fourth Coalition against 
France, Napoleon once more, by his rapid and overwhelm- 
ing tactics, flung himself against the Prussians at Jena and 
Auerstadt, defeated them before their allies had time to 
move to their support, and then, from his headquarters at 
Berlin, swooped down upon the Russians at Eylau and 
Friedland, and whipped them so completely that they 



THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 49 

were glad to sue for peace, and agree to the treaty of Tilsit 
in July, 1807. Then, joining with France the conqueror, 
in an enforced union against England, Russia likewise be- 
came the tool of France, and Napoleon, now at the pin- 
nacle of his power, was the acknowledged master and 
dictator of Europe. 

Knowing that he could not successfully meet England 
on the sea, and that the invasion of that plucky island 
kingdom was neither wise nor promising. Napoleon deter- 
mined to starve out his most stubborn foe by a commercial 
blockade of her ports. All nations under French control 
or in alliance with France were forbidden doing any busi- 
ness with England. All British ships were declared sub- 
ject to capture ; and the ships of any nation that attempted 
to trade with England were declared forfeit to France. 

By this tyrannical decree Napoleon hoped to humble 
England on the ocean, and throw the sea-trade of the world 
into the hands of England's foeman and rival, the repub- 
lic of the United States. As a result, American com- 
merce greatly increased. Her ships and sailors were on 
all waters, and, for a time, American vessels were the only 
neutral ships on the ocean doing a profitable trade with all 
the nations of Europe. 

England, of course, retaliated, and struck back at this 
union of all Europe — all the civilized world, in fact, against 
her. She issued what were called "Orders in Council " — 
that is, the king's orders approved by his councillors — 
prohibiting the trade of any neutral nation with France. 
This was a direct blow at America ; for, with France say- 
ing that no one should trade with England, and with Eng- 
land declaring that no one should trade with France, 



50 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

America, as the only neutral trader on the sea, was in a 
"bad box." 

England was still the mistress of the seas. Her war- 
ships patrolled the coasts ; her captains stopped Ameri- 
can vessels whenever sighted, and, claiming the right of 
search, took off any man that was an Englishman or that 
looked like an Englishman. 

This complicated things sadly. It seemed to Americans 
that, what with French "Decrees" and English "Orders 
in Council," the American carrying-trade was likely to be 
altogether destroyed ; so in 1 807 Thomas Jefferson, presi- 
dent of the United States, by the advice and consent of 
Congress, proclaimed an " Embargo," forbidding American 
vessels to sail to any foreign port, — French or English or 
European, — and ordering all foreign vessels to remain in 
port. So far did the strong hand of Napoleon stretch 
throughout the world. 

Such things, however, could not long continue. Already 
signs of revolt against the tyranny of Napoleon were ap- 
parent in Europe. The first spoke in Napoleon's wheel 
was inserted by those from whom such action might least 
be expected — the slow-going, non-progressive nations of 
Spain and Portugal. 

Almost from the start, Spain and Portugal had been the 
most unquestioning in yielding obedience to the French 
conqueror. Portugal had helped him in all his efforts to 
humble England, and Spain had placed both her ships and 
soldiers at his command. They deserved the best treat- 
ment at his hands ; but, instead, Napoleon looked upon 
them with contempt ; and without their consent, without 
even consulting their wishes, he suddenly concluded that 



THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 51 

the coasts of Spain and Portugal were altogether too handy 
for English ships ; and that, as Portugal seemed unduly dis- 
posed to lean upon England, and as English armies might 
land on the coasts of the Peninsula, and easily invade 
France from the south, it was best, so he decided, to order 
the kings of Spain and Portugal from their thrones, and 
put one of his numerous brothers in their place. 

To decide was to act with Napoleon, Emperor of the 
French. At once he invaded Spain with an army of one 
hundred thousand men. Joseph, the eldest brother of 
Napoleon, was declared king of Spain ; and Portugal was 
wiped from the map. The kings of the two nations were 
kidnapped or driven into exile ; and of course, as possessor 
of both thrones. Napoleon also claimed possession of all 
the colonies of both Spain and Portugal — which meant 
all of South America and a goodly part of North America. 
Even in this did Napoleon scheme to better himself, be- 
cause of the loss of Louisiana, and, besides being dictator 
of Europe, to become master of the World. In all his- 
tory there never was quite so mighty a burglar nor, in his 
peculiar line, quite so remarkable a man ! 

But when he tried to force the bit into the mouth of 
Spain he made the mistake of his life. It was the begin- 
ning of the end. Already in Germany this protest against 
the tyrant had begun. When kings and princes bent in 
surrender or subservience to Napoleon it was a noble and 
patriotic woman, Louisa, queen of Prussia, who dared the 
wrath of the conqueror, and stirred to life, in the hearts of 
the German people, the passion for liberty and union. 

But all first attempts at resistance failed ; and it seemed 
as if, in no land, was successful opposition possible. 



52 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

It was, however, this invasion of the heretofore friendly 
territory of Spain and Portugal that aroused retaliation, 
drew the attention of the emperor from more important 
matters, weakened his army, sapped his resources, and 
placed in his rear a foe instead of a friend. 

Then England saw her opportunity. Taking advantage 
of the popular rising in Spain against the abductor of its 
king and the plea for help that came from Portugal, Eng- 
land hastened to the assistance of the people of the Penin- 
sula, and in the summer of 1808 sent an army into the 
south under command of Sir Arthur Wellesley, Napoleon's 
later rival and final conqueror. 

It was a small army — only ten thousand men ; but it 
became a rallying-point for patriotic Spain and Portugal 
united against Napoleon. This time England came as the 
deliverer ; and, as to a deliverer, the people upon whom 
a French tyrant, backed by a French army, had forced a 
French king, responded heartily. 

"Bonaparte," said one eminent British statesman (the 
English never called him anything but Bonaparte if they 
could help it), " Bonaparte has yet to learn what it is to 
combat a people who are animated by one spirit against 
him." That spirit of union against a common foe inspired, 
also, all Englishmen, however they differed in politics or 
religion. In the rescue of Spain they saw their first real 
opportunity; "never," they declared, "had so happy an 
opportunity existed for Britain to strike a bold stroke for 
the rescue of the world." 

To attempt that stroke, Wellesley's ten thousand men 
landed in Portugal ; the patriots flocked to his standard ; 
the insurrection against Napoleon's blunder spread rapidly ; 



THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 53 

braced up by the support of England, the Spaniards won a 
victory over the French at Baylen, and Wellesley drove 
them out of Portugal, and forced one of their armies to 
surrender. 

It was the first disastrous blow that Napoleon, secure in 
his own triumphs, had felt. It aroused him to instant action. 

Securing himself from annoyance and attack in the rear 
by strengthening his alliance with the Russian Czar, and 
weakening Prussia by driving into exile the Baron Stein, 
its one great statesman who dared withstand his tyranny, 
Napoleon, in November, 1808, invaded Spain with a great 
army of over two hundred thousand men, and, in his usual 
vigorous style, prepared to clean the English out of Spain 
and crush the insurrection. 

This was no easy task. The emperor of the French, 
whose presence alone at the head of his troops was equal 
to an additional army, might scatter ihe insurgents and 
defeat the English ; but, even his most strenuous effort to 
correct the mistake he had made of turning Spain from an 
ally into a foeman could not accomplish his ends. He 
broke through the Spanish lines, captured Madrid, and 
again set up his puppet brother as king ; but he had lost 
the support of the people of Spain. He forced the English, 
who were hastening to the relief of Madrid, to fall back in 
retreat ; and at Corunna, in January, 1809, he drove their 
army from Spain ; but the English rallied and returned to 
annoy him. Wellesley, victorious at Talavera, became 
Vicount Wellington, while the retreat from Corunna gave 
to the world, in Wolfe's "Burial of Sir John Moore," a 
poem that will outlast all the questionable glories of French 
victory and tyranny : 



54 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

" Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, 
As his corse to the ramparts we hurried ; 
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot 
O'er the grave where our hero we brxried. 



But half of our heavy task was done, 

When the clock struck the hour for retiring; 

And we heard the distant and random gun 
That the foe was sullenly firing. 

Slowly and sadly we laid him down 
From the field of his fame fresh and gory; 

We carved not a line, we raised not a stone, 
But we left him alone in his glory." 

But England never forgot him, and in due time he was 
mightily avenged. 

Thinking he had put an end to the Spanish defiance of 
his authority, and to England's aid to Spain, Napoleon 
returned to Paris to prepare for a new war with Austria, 
stirred to a fresh resentment against the all-devouring 
Corsican. 

His appetite, indeed, had now become insatiate. He 
proposed with the Czar of Russia, of whom he had made 
an ally, to divide Europe, if not the world, between them. 
But his very success, the success of the French people, 
and the knowledge of what the people, and not their kings, 
may accomplish, was impelling the patriotism of Germany 
to assert itself. 

For his own selfish ends Napoleon now picked a quarrel 
with Austria. That slow-going and king-ruled land pro- 
tested, but to no purpose ; whereupon, seeing how valiantly 
Spain had turned upon the conqueror, though in a fruitless 
defiance, Austria took a lesson from Spain and boldly 
defied the dictator. 



THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 55 

Charles, Archduke of Austria, son and brother of its 
emperors, appealed to the Germans of Europe to help 
Austria in her struggle against the tryant. "Austria 
fights not only for her own autonomy," he declared ; 
" she takes the sword for the independence and honor of 
Germany." 

But Germany was not yet ready to prove her manhood. 
Prussia, overawed by Russia, dared not help ; and the 
"assorted lot " of little princes who had linked themselves 
to Napoleon's grandeur in his enforced Confederation of 
the Rhine, had joined all their small sized armies to the 
veterans of the Empire. Spain, on whom in earlier wars 
he had relied as a friend, now required a French army to 
keep it from being a successful foe ; but with his German 
allies, and with Russia holding back, he believed he could 
soon finish Austria. 

He did, but it was by no means an easy task. He was 
fighting the people now, where, before, he had fought sim- 
ply their kings and soldiers. " The liberties of Europe," 
the patriotic Archduke Charles, who led the armies of 
Austria, declared to his compatriots, "have taken refuge 
under your banner. Your victories will break their bonds, 
and your German brothers, still in the enemy's ranks, await 
their redemption." 

With the rapidity of action that made him so wonderful 
a soldier and so great a general. Napoleon turned upon 
Austria with an army of two hundred thousand men, de- 
feated her soldiers in a half-dozen battles, again occupied 
her captured capital, Vienna, and, pushing after her flee- 
ing army, fell upon the Archduke Charles, who stood pluck- 
ily at bay at Aspern and Esseling. 



56 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

There the conqueror at first experienced defeat ; for in 
the archduke, he, for the first time, met a foeman really 
"worthy of his steel;" but, with re-enforced ranks, he again 
marched to the attack; and in the terrible battle of Wagram, 
on the fifth of July, 1809, he totally defeated the army of 
Austria, and drove that unhappy nation once again into a 
humiliating and destructive truce. 

The defeat of Austria crushed out all opposition to 
Napoleon, save where, in Spain and Portugal, the British 
army under Wellington battled stubbornly, but unsuccess- 
fully, against the French army of occupation, and the 
enraged people defended their honors and firesides against 
the invaders. There, again, a woman spurred her brothers 
to action; and the courageous defence of the city on the 
Ebro has made the " Maid of Saragossa " forever famous : 

" Her lover sinks — she sheds no ill-timed tear ; 

Her chief is slain — she fills his fatal post ; 

Her fellows flee — she checks their base career ; 

The foe retires — she leads the sallying host: 

Who can appease like her a lover's ghost ? 

Who can avenge so well a leader's fall ? 

What maid retrieve, when man's flushed hope is lost? 

Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul, 
Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall ? " 

So, too, among the stern heights of the Tyrol, Andreas 
Hofer, " innkeeper of the Sandhof," the only patriot who 
dared to answer the stirring appeal of the Archduke Charles 
by a revolt against the Bavarian allies of France, maintained 
a desperate resistance, even after Austria's overthrow, and, 
betrayed by a comrade, met Napoleon's vengeance bravely, 
— a hero to the last. 

Had Germany, at that time, shown the courage of Spain, 



THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 57 

or the determination of the peasants of the Tyrol, Wagram 
might have been a dearly bought victory. But the humilia- 
tion of the kingdom of the great Frederick seemed complete, 
and even the outburst of one small band of patriotic Ger- 
mans, under the leadership of brave Major Schill, aroused 
but little enthusiasm, and brought death and disgrace to 
the heroic Schill and his bold eight hundred. 

So 18 10 saw the world practically at the feet of Na- 
poleon. The fifth coalition against him had ended in 
shameful defeat. He was literally king of kings, and 
"monarch of all he surveyed." His " Continental System" 
seemed perfected. Russia was his ally ; Austria and Prus- 
sia were his conquered foes ; the princes of the Rhine were 
his confederates ; the Pope of Rome was his prisoner ; 
Italy and Spain, Holland and Belgium, were "annexed" to 
the Empire, while Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, and 
Sweden were his vassal states. In all Europe only one 
nation dared still openly to resist and defy him — England ; 
and all Europe was against her. 

The imperial hand was both grasping and far-reaching. 
Asia and America alike paid tribute to him, in yielding to 
him new possessions by conquest or treaty ; his dream of 
an oriental empire was by no means given up. 

"We will make an end of Europe," he declared, "and 
then, as robbers fling themselves on others less bold, we 
will fling ourselves on India." 

By the right of conquest over Spain and Portugal, he 
assumed possession of their colonies in North and South 
America ; he even contemplated making, out of the territory 
of the United States, a kingdom for some one of the Bour- 
bon princes whom the French Revolution had overthrown. 



58 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

"Three years more and I am lord of the miiverse," he 
said, full of assurance, as, puffed with the pride of power, 
he laid down the law for the world, made and unmade 
kings at his pleasure, divorced the wife whom he loved, 
contemptuously threw aside Russia's offer of the young 
sister of the Czar, whom he might have made his new wife, 
and, for state reasons only, married the daughter of that 
emperor of Austria who had been the centre and pivot of all 
the continual coalitions against him. In all history there 
is no parallel to the character of Napoleon, Emperor of 
the French. 

Europe, war-tossed and war-weary, was on the defensive. 
We look at the story of those days of battle and blood, and 
feel a certain contempt for all these foemen of Napoleon, 
who, hating him as they did, yet scarcely dared to strike a 
blow in protest. Austria, for whom Hofer roused the Ty- 
rol to rebellion, made no struggle to save that mountain 
patriot, whom, indeed, his own countrymen betrayed ; the 
following of Schill and the German revolutionists was small 
and uncertain ; even in Spain, where England was attempt- 
ting an offensive campaign, the Spanish people grew indo- 
lent and indifferent toward those who came to succor them, 
and Wellington could only hold a defensive position or 
withdraw before the French power ; and when, in July, 
1809, English soldiers attempted an assault on Napoleon's 
stolen strongholds in another part of Europe, they retreated 
discomfited and beaten from the marshes of Walcheren, 
and failed in their effort to deliver Holland. 

For this apathy and disinclination to "tackle " the victo- 
rious Emperor of France the people of Europe are not to 
be altogether blamed. They were learning but slowly that 



THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 59 

they were, indeed, the people. Long centuries of kingly 
rule and the tyranny of the minority had made them slow 
to rush into war in behalf of that arrogant minority. 

And, so far as the people were concerned, they were 
really, except for the waste and slaughter of war, benefited 
by the successes of this imperial robber of France, even if 
their kings and nobles were not. 

Napoleon Bonaparte had sprung from the people. He 
knew the woes and worries, the burdens and tyrannies, that 
the favored few, called the "nobility," laid upon the toiling 
masses of Europe. " The man with the hoe," who through 
ages of serfdom had been scarcely better than the beast, 
was helped rather than hindered by "the man on horse- 
back," who rode roughshod over kings and princes, thrones 
and emperors, to victory and conquest. Napoleon Bona- 
parte was the great readjuster of Europe. 

In France, though the victorious nation was sorely bled 
for men to fill the armies of the Emperor, there was more 
safety and repose than the land had ever known. The 
good results of the terrible Revolution remained ; the law- 
lessness and tyranny had given place to order ; family, 
property, and religion were protected ; while, over all, still 
soared the glory of France, which as yet, under the Em- 
peror, had never known defeat. 

In Germany, thinking men recognized that Napoleon's 
success meant the overthrow of the old aristocratic meth- 
ods, and, by the terrible shaking it gave to those ancient 
thrones and dynasties, really meant the advance of that 
liberalism which develops the real power of the people. 
The laws forced by Napoleon upon the people he conquered 
were wiser and more just than any they yet had known; 



6o THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

and the basis of the Code Napoleon, which gave a new 
civil law to France and its dependencies, to-day survives in 
the laws of those very nations which, later, combined for 
his overthrow. 

England, in her stern determination to fight this man 
who sought first to unite the continent against her, and 
then force her to yield to him or be broken in pieces, girded 
herself for the struggle as never before, intent on preserv- 
ing her nationality, constitutional liberty, and commercial 
supremacy. 

For these very things, too, was Napoleon fighting, al- 
though he did not know it himself. To-day, as we look 
back at that troublesome time — the first ten years of the 
Nineteenth Century — we know that, robber, destroyer, 
conqueror, tyrant, and despot though he was. Napoleon, 
Emperor of the French, was the dominating force of that 
bitter time ; he was the purgative dose that God gave to 
Europe and the world ; and his fight, even in spite of him- 
self, was for that " nationality, individual liberty, and popu- 
lar sovereignty " which, although he was to fall as their 
greatest sacrifice and victim, became the impelling forces 
of the Nineteenth Century. 

Thus, again, do we see how, as the English poet says, — 

" God moves in a mysterious way, 
His wonders to perform." 

and how, as we may again and again discern in the story 
of the world, even when we cannot explain the reason for 
the existence of wrong and evil. Divine Providence is ever, 
in the interest of eternal progress, -making use of the ways 
and even of the wiles of men — 

" From seeming evil still educing good." 



THE GRIP OF "THE MAN ON HORSEBACK." 6 1 

Already, before 1810 came into the century, this prog- 
ress was almost apparent from the "Mount of Vision." 
It was in 1807 that Robert Fulton on the Hudson River 
demonstrated, by sailing his steamboat from New York to 
Albany, the practical value of that marvellous power of 
steam in navigation which Napoleon, to whom Fulton had 
presented his idea, contemptuously " turned down " as a 
" toy." In Great Britain, Telford and Macadam were mak- 
ing the first of those " good roads " which are to-day the 
glory of England ; in America, the simple but wonderful 
cotton-gin, invented in the closing years of the eigh- 
teenth century by Eli Whitney, a New England school- 
teacher in Georgia, had already, made the cotton crop of 
America one of the great factors in industrial progress, 
and had so increased the productive power of the United 
States as to lead Macaulay, the English historian, to de- 
clare that "what Peter the Great did to make Russia 
dominant, Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton-gin, has 
more than equalled in its relation to the power and prog- 
ress of the United States." 

By the year 18 10, indeed, the whole world had shown a 
substantial advance in producing things and in helping- 
man, in spite of (perhaps because of) the terrible grip of 
the one man of his day. Napoleon. Savings banks and 
Bible societies, school societies and fine arts institutions, 
charitable endowments and hospitals, had already been 
established ; improvements in steam possibilities and in 
labor-saving machinery, in navigation, printing, weaving, 
stereotyping, and lighting had been made practical and 
helpful ; the slave-trade was abolished in England ; and, 
though cotton was making negro slavery a profitable neces- 



62 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

sity in America, the importation of slaves was prohibited 
by Congress in 1 808. And it is to the honor of Napoleon 
that he, alone of all monarchs and rulers, broke into that 
terrible and unjust persecution of the Jews which has been 
a blot upon Christian civilization from Constantine to 
Dreyfus. 

Intellectual thought was growing, as opposition to 
tyranny awakened it. In every country writers and 
thinkers, poets and philosophers, story-tellers and scientists, 
were laying the foundations for those new methods of 
imparting useful and inspiring thoughts which were to lift 
the world out of the slow and sleepy methods of a limited 
literature and a hampered intelligence into the broader 
fields of effort and the higher planes of achievement. The 
first decade of the Nineteenth Century closed with the 
light growing brighter and the prosperity of the- people 
slowly but surely coming on. 

And yet, in 18 10, the whole world seemed at the mercy 
of the world-conqueror. How would civilization free itself 
from the burden of Napoleon and his million fighting 
men .'' 



" Our greatest yet with least pretettce ; 
Great in cotmcil and great in war, 
Forejnost captaiti of his time, 
Rich in savifig coviino>i sense. 
And, as the greatest only are. 
In his simplicity sublime." 

Alfred Tennyson. 



THE AGE OF WELLINGTON. 
Militarism. 

{1810-1820.) 



DUKE OF WELLINGTON 

(Arthur Il'ellesley), 
CONQUEROR OF NAPOLEON, 
Born Dublin, Ireland, April 30, lytq, 
Died IValmer Castle, Etigland, Sept. 14, 1832. 



1 



CHAPTER IV. 

HOW napoleon's star set at last. 

{From 1810 to i8ij.) 

THAT question was one that was forcing itself upon the 
attention of thinking men and the desperate needs of 
conquered, vassal, allied, or hostile nations. Who would 
rid the world of Napoleon, Emperor of the French ? 

There is a certain sympathy with all men who stand at 
bay. The champion of a great cause. Napoleon Bonaparte 
had placed himself above the cause he championed ; the 
victim as well as the slave of his own ambitidhs, he now 
stood the conqueror of the world ; and yet, in all the world, 
there was no man more alone than he — "in the midst of 
his glory — but alone ! " one contemporary declared. 

And now, as he braces himself for the final world- 
struggle, one cannot but admire the self-confidence, the 
supreme audacity, of the man. He had overthrown feudal- 
ism. The old aristocratic order, under which, for centu- 
ries, the world had groaned and labored, lay dead beneath 
his all-conquering heel when the Nineteenth Century was 
young, although that young Nineteenth Century knew it 
not. Washington's Americans had dealt it the first stag- 
gering blow ; the unbalanced and furious revolutionists of 
France had bloodily grappled with and throttled it; and 
Napoleon, pupil of America and son of the Revolution, had 
finally overthrown it, and upon its ruins was striving to rear 
a new order and an imperial dynasty. 

65 



66 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

But this was not to be. God, in his wisdom, had used 
Napoleon as a mighty means for progress ; but now other 
means were necessary ; the people themselves, and not one 
man, must be the power for the world's advance. Napo- 
leon's "star," in which he believed so implicitly, must 
set. 

When the year 1810 came in none but a prophet could 
have told how near that star was to its decline. Napoleon, 
Emperor of the French, seemed supreme. The European 
sea-coast, from Stockholm around to Trieste, was occupied 
or controlled by him ; and, of all the nations, only England 
stood his open foe. His simplest word seated and unseated 
kings ; a turn of his hand forced England and America 
into war. He loaded his favorites with gifts and titles ; he 
made Paris'the centre of imperial display, bought the sup- 
port of his opponents, and muzzled, by subsidies-or censor- 
ship, the liberty of the press. When his son was born — 
the heir upon whom all his highest ambitions turned — the 
proud father forced subjects and vassals into so mighty a 
festival of rejoicing, that, as one student of that time de- 
clares, "No boy ever came on the earthly stage amid such 
splendors, or seemed destined to honors such as appeared 
to await this one." 

Off in one corner of his vast domains trouble was con- 
tinuous. He had sought to force Spain into line ; but the 
"Spanish ulcer" as it has been called was, by the aid of 
England, slowly eating its way into a vital point. When 
the final struggle came, Spain was the enemy in the rear 
that helped on disaster. 

When Napoleon's brother Joseph, whom the emperor had 
made king of Spain, objected to the high-handed methods 



HOW NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. ()j 

by which Napoleon sought to force the Spaniards to sub- 
mission and urged gentler measures, the emperor con- 
temptuously pushed him aside, and announced that Spain 
was hereafter to be a part of France. 

Even England's ministers weakened an instant before 
this imperious will. They would have withdrawn the 
British troops from the Peninsula ; but Wellington was 
not the man to desert an ally or take a backward step. 

"The honor and interest of England," he said, "require 
that we should hold our ground here ; and, please God, I 
will maintain it as long as I can." 

He did so, in spite of defeat and disaster. The people 
of Spain and Portugal re-aroused to madness at Napoleon's 
subversion of their liberties, threw aside their sluggishness, 
and rallied again to Wellington's side. Then making a 
stand against the French invaders behind the fortifications 
of Torres Vedras, they flung them back, terribly reduced, 
to Ciudad Rodrigo ; and the bloody battle of Albuera in 
May, 1811, and the brilliant victory at Salamanca in July, 
18 12, cleared the French from Portugal and southern 
Spain, and annihilated the military power of France in the 
well-defended Peninsula. 

The successful stand of Wellington at the lines of Torres 
Vedras awoke Europe to the knowledge that the French 
power was not irresistible .and that a union in resistance 
to Napoleon's tyranny might deliver Europe from his grip. 

More than this, the people were beginning to assert 
themselves rather than relying upon their useless kings. 
The spirit of German liberty, founded on a passionate love 
for the Fatherland and a slowly awakening knowledge of 
the real German power, was asserting itself in spite of the 



68 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

timid Prussian king and the subservient and confederated 
princes of the Rhine. 

This assertion came slowly, however; it was only se- 
cretly growing when, in 1811, Napoleon's gigantic ally, 
Russia, disputed the Corsican conqueror's claim to rule the 
continent of Europe ; became jealous of his efforts to bring 
the other nations to serve his purpose ; objected to his 
hurtful " continental system," and was angered at his com- 
mercial methods which had almost ruined business in 
Russia. 

The Czar, enraged with Napoleon for preferring an 
Austrian to a Russian princess in his choice of a wife, and 
fearful lest, in recarving Europe, Napoleon might slice 
away from Russia's platter too much of conquered and un- 
happy Poland, set about preparing an army to menace, or 
if need be fight, his victorious rival of France. 

So matters stood, when, in 181 1, Napoleon, determining 
on new conquests, declared of himself, " I am driven on- 
ward to a goal which I know not." He summoned to his 
standard an army of half a million men, and having pre- 
sided in Dresden over a glittering " Congress of kings," — 
vassal or allied princes, — set out in June, 18 12, on the 
effort of his life, — the invasion and conquest of Russia. 

To keep England out of the way, he had stirred up 
trouble between her and the United States, which resulted 
in the disastrous land campaigns and brilliant sea struggles 
known in our history as the War of 18 12. 

There were, of course, other surface reasons for this 
second embroiling of the " State of Great Britain " and the 
States that, forty years before, had been her successfully 
rebellious colonists. The old animosities had not died out. 



HOW NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 69 

Men like Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, who bore upon 
their bodies the scars of British tyranny and in their hearts 
the smouldering desire for revenge, welcomed the oppor- 
tunity they sought ; shipmasters who had suffered from 
England's sea-arrogance, and merchants who had lost by 
her methods, longed to see America assert her rights on 
sea and land ; pioneers and borderers who knew how British 
agents stirred up the restless red Indians, and how British 
gold had supplied arms and ammunition for the bold chief 
Tecumseh's conspiracy of confederated tribes, formed for 
the destruction of the United States, burned with the de- 
sire to meet and forever overthrow the obstacle to the re- 
public's western expansion. But, behind all of these reasons 
for American indignation and pugnacity, may now be traced 
the restless finger of Napoleon, shrewdly stirring up trouble 
between these English-speaking rivals, issuing imperial "de- 
crees " that brought out obstinate and angry " Orders in 
Council" and "Embargoes" and " Non-intercourse Acts " 
and even conniving with England for an uncertain peace at 
the price of forcing from the United States a kingdom for 
the prostrate house of Bourbon. 

Abroad, France could not hope to retain her threatened 
colonies while hostile England ruled the seas. Her naval 
warfare had been continuously disastrous. She had lost Cay- 
enne and Martinique, San Domingo and Guadaloupe, in the 
American Indies ; in Africa and the Asiatic Indies, Sene- 
gal and Mauritius, the Isle de Bourbon and Java, with 
Batavia, had been wrested from her. England's sea-power 
must be occupied, and England's war-might diverted from 
European disturbances, if Napoleon was to have a free hand 
for his conquest of Russia, and in his establishment as em- 



yo THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

peror of the continent. In 1 8 1 2 the man who dominated 
the world had once more set all nations ''by the ears." 

In his assault on Russia, Napoleon had the enforced and 
unwilling support of half the states of Europe. To the 
make-up of his "Grand Army," Frenchmen, Italians, Swiss, 
Dutchmen, and Poles, Avith the German of the Rhine lands, 
came, by order of their rulers, in battalions and brigades. 
Austria, with thirty thousand men, formed the right wing 
of his army ; Prussia, with twenty thousand men, occupied 
the left wing. Of all the European nations only Denmark 
could remain neutral. Sweden, whose prince was one of 
Napoleon's own generals, broke from the emperor and 
sided with Russia ; while England, fighting the French in 
Spain, made a treaty with France's open foes, Sweden and 
Russia. 

So the summer of 181 2 opened with the "Christian" 
nations of the world in arms against each other ; and Napo- 
leon, Emperor of the French and the dominating influence 
of the world, marched across the river Niemen to the in- 
vasion of Russia with an army of half a million men. Be- 
hind him were great reserves of supplies in storehouses 
and arsenals ; his communications were kept open so that 
fleet couriers could ride between Paris and Moscow with 
the latest news ; and before his victorious advance the 
Russians, overwhelmed by defeat at Borodino, fell back in 
flight, while before the old-time capital of Russia the con- 
queror cried to his soldiers in triumph : " They are ours at 
last ! March on ; let us open the gates of Moscow ! " 

Borodino was fought on the third of September, 1812; 
the gates of Moscow were opened on the seventh ; and as 
Murat and his cavalry clattered down the deserted streets 



HOW NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 71 

of the sacred city of Russia, — "Mother Moscow," as the 
adoring Russians call it, — Napoleon rode in triumph to 
the Kremlin, and in that wonderful old palace, half citadel 
and half sanctuary, declared himself the conqueror of 
Russia. 

Napoleon had brought with him to Russia the crown, 
sceptre, and robe with which, in the Czar's conquered capi- 
tal, he proposed to have himself solemnly invested as he 
was proclaimed "Emperor of the West." 

But that imposing regalia was never unpacked in Russia 
from the emperor's camp-chest. The change had come in 
the story of Napoleon. 

"God have mercy upon us!" was the cry with which 
the Russian soldiers flung themselves to death at the battle 
of Borodino. " Die for your faith and the Czar ! " was 
the cry of the Russian peasants, as, setting their "holy 
city " in flames rather than leave it as a sport to the in- 
vader, they turned upon the conquering army, and began 
that terrible campaign of merciless devastation that laid 
western Russia in waste, and forced the French invaders 
into those days of historic horror known as "the retreat 
from Moscow." 

For into retreat the proudly proclaimed invasion of 
Russia speedily turned. The proposals for peace which 
Napoleon expected from the defeated Czar did not come, 
though he wasted four weeks in useless waiting. Instead, 
Russia, re-enforced by England, made peace with Turkey, 
drew her strengthening lines of obedient soldiers and home- 
defending peasants closely around Moscow, and fell upon 
the French emperor, who, in his enforced idleness in the 
Kremlin, had sunk energy in indolence, the soldier in the 



72 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

emperor, and lost the old fire that had made him, through 
all the years before, the invincible warrior. 

Aroused to defence by Russia, for an instant the soldier 
in Napoleon blazed forth ; but again came indisposition and 
indifference. Already the Napoleon of the past was gone ; 
the world conqueror, unable to conquer himself, the victim 
even then of disease, indolence, and a desire for the com- 
forts of power, turned back from a nation at bay, and began 
the long retreat to France, dejected and dispirited, unable 
to endure the ignominy of a first defeat. 

The story of that historic retreat from Moscow is well 
known. Harassed in an enemy's country ; overtaken by 
driving snowstorms and bitter cold ; with allies falling 
away and vassals straggling and deserting ; exhausted, 
famishing, frozen, lost, and half-crazed by the horrors of 
the retreat, the great invading force of Napoleon the em- 
peror dwindled day by day, until, after the terrible tragedy 
at the crossing of the Beresina, scarce one hundred thousand 
men straggled over the River Niemen, where, six months 
before, nearly six hundred thousand men had proudly 
marched to conquest. 

But so dominant was Napoleon's influence in France, so 
great the belief in his genius and his glory, that, instead of 
protesting against the demands of this man who had just 
wasted the lives of three hundred thousand men, France 
responded at once to his summons for a new army that 
should annihilate Russia, and, for the twentieth time, help 
Europe "tear itself to pieces." A new army of three hun- 
dred thousand men was ready for action in May, 1813 ; and 
this, by the addition of the armies of his allies, he hoped to 
increase to more than half a million. 



HOW NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 73 

But his allies had no desire to slaughter themselves for 
Napoleon's ambitions ; the Confederates of the Rhine 
"confederated " slowly and sullenly; Saxony hesitated and 
argued ; Austria held back, and secretly prepared to desert ; 
while Prussia, aroused by the stubbornness of Spain, the 
self-devotion of Russia, and the awakened patriotism of 
her own sons, "braced up" their king until he, too, re- 
sponded to the enthusiastic demands of his people, and, 
breaking away from his French alliance, sounded the 
bugle-call to arms, and bade all Germans unite for liberty 
and the Fatherland. 

"I have but one fatherland, and that is Germany," de- 
clared Stein, the patriotic statesman, who, recalled from 
exile, aroused Prussia to revolt, and Germany to unite. 

"What is the German Fatherland?" sang Arndt, the 
peasant-poet from Rugen, — 

" Where'er resounds the German tongue, 
Where'er its hymns to God are sung! 

That land is the land, 
Brave German, that, thy fatherland 1 

That is the German fatherland ! 
Where scorn shall foreign triflers brand. 
Where all are foes whose deeds offend. 
Where every noble soul's a friend : 

Be this the land. 
All Germany shall be the land ! " 

Angered by the audacity of the Prussian revolt, Napo- 
leon, aroused from his indolence, flung himself upon Ger- 
many at the head of one hundred and eighty thousand 
men. But, at Liitzen, and Bautzen, and Wurschen, fought in 
May, 18 1 3, though successful as a general, he was no longer 



74 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 

successful as a conqueror. The Germans would not yield; 
his victories were not decisive ; Prussia was not swept from 
his path ; Russia was not again invaded and punished ; 
both sides awaited the decision of Austria ; and Germany, 
jubilant with hope, and fast in its determination to be free, 
sang with enthusiasm the famous " sword-song " of Korner, 
who died for German unity at Lutzen almost before the 
ink had dried in which that stirring song was written : 

" Sword, on my left side gleaming, 
What means thy bright eyes beaming? 
It makes my spirit dance 
To see thy friendly glance. 
Hurrah I 

Yes, good sword, I am free, 
And love thee heartily, 
And clasp thee to my side, 
E'en as my plighted bride. 
Hurrah 1 

Now let the loved one sing. 
Now let the clear blade ring, 
Till the bright sparks shall fly, 
Heralds of victory 1 
Hurrah 1 " 

Austria decided. She cast in her lot against the hus- 
band of her princess. All Europe combined against Napo- 
leon in one last great ''coalition ;" and at Leipsic, after two 
months of varying battle, three hundred thousand allies — 
the soldiers of Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Sweden — met 
Napoleon's one hundred and thirty thousand men, and 
defeated them in the great conflict known as " the Battle of 
the Nations." Napoleon retreated across the Rhine with 



HOW NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 75 

the shattered remains of his army, scarce seventy thousand 
in all ; and his power in Europe was forever broken. 

The allies were jubilant ; Napoleon had been defeated ; 
France lay open before them ; and giving the defeated 
emperor scant time to retrieve himself, they pushed on to 
his destruction, while the emancipated Germans filled the 
air with their lusty singing of Arndt's rousing chorus in 
honor of their stout old field-marshal, Blucher : — 

" Then sound, blaring trumpets 1 Hussars, charge once more 1 
Ride, field-marshal, ride like the wind in the roar ! 
To the Rhine, to the Rhine, in your triumph advance! 
Brave sword of our country, right on into France ! 
And here are the Germans : Jtichheirassassa! 
The Germans are joyful; they're shouting hurrah!" 

" We are not at war with France, but with Napoleon ! " 
declared the allies ; and when the defeated emperor refused 
to consider their proposals for peace they crossed the Rhine, 
and, in three great armies of invasion, closed upon Napo- 
leon in France. 

But Napoleon in France was in no way incHned to admit 
defeat or accept peace. He granted truces ; he did not 
propose them, he arrogantly declared. So he gathered a 
new army, mostly raw recruits, and neglecting to fortify 
Paris, which in the security of his years of success he had 
never deemed necessary, he struck boldly at the invaders of 
France, and, aiming to surprise and overthrow each divis- 
ion of their army in turn, made a brilliant campaign in 
defence of his imperilled empire. 

The coalition was, however, too strong for him. Its 
members had sworn to each other to fight unceasingly 
against Napoleon, if it took twenty years to conquer, him. 



*]() THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

It took only three months for the allies to do this. In 
spite of a desperate resistance the conqueror at bay was 
conqueror but for a brief season ; slowly but surely, in spite 
of Napoleon's defence of unfortified France, the invaders 
closed about Paris, stormed and captured its weak barriers 
while Napoleon was desperately marching to attack them 
in the rear ; and before he could come up, his capital had 
surrendered, the allied armies had entered Paris as a cap- 
tured city, and Napoleon, deserted by the very men whom 
he had raised to riches and power, was forced to abdicate 
the throne upon which he had placed himself. On the 
sixth of April, 1814, with France divided in councils, and 
at the mercy of the enemy. Napoleon ceased to be the 
Emperor of the French, and contented himself with accept- 
ing the "generosity" of his allied enemies, who permitted 
him to retain the title of emperor, and to rule, as his 
"dominion," the little island of Elba, — a patch of rock 
and vineyard in the Mediterranean, eighteen miles long, by 
from two to three miles wide. 

Thus suddenly did " Napoleon's star " set in darkness. 
In all history there is no more striking example of meteoric 
success — and failure. 

At the mercy of the allies, France, having expelled 
Napoleon, accepted a Bourbon king — the brother of that 
Louis whom the Revolution had slaughtered — and an en- 
forced peace which left it smaller than when Napoleon first 
appeared to save her from the Revolution. The five great 
powers of Europe met in Congress at Vienna, and reset 
the continent within its old boundaries ; but, while at- 
tempting to restore things to the old conditions, the Con- 
gress of Vienna discovered that the world had progressed, 



HOW NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 77 

and was forced to acknowledge and permit such things 
as the rights of the governed and the necessity of consti- 
tutions. 

The world imagined that peace and prosperity had come 
at last ; but, suddenly, Napoleon broke from his enforced 
idleness at Elba, and landing in France with fifteen hun- 
dred men, roused the army to revolt from the dotard Bour- 
bon to the hero Napoleon, and with the cry of " Long live 
the emperor ! " drove the Bourbons from Paris, where 
Napoleon proclaimed himself once more Emperor of the 
French with but one object, "to increase the prosperity 
of France by strengthening pubUc liberty." 

It was a dramatic and exciting episode in the world's 
story, just suited to such a nature as Napoleon's and to so 
volatile a people as the French. But it was as short-lived as 
it was impossible of success. On the first of March, 181 5, 
Napoleon landed in France ; on the thirteenth he pro- 
claimed himself emperor. In just one hundred days he 
had staked all, and lost on his last throw for power. 

Waterloo was fought on the eighteenth of June, 1 8 1 5 ; 
and, on the twenty-second of June, the defeated adventurer 
abdicated his briefly occupied throne, "a sacrifice to the 
enemies of France," and, captured by England, was exiled 
to the far-off island of St. Helena — a prisoner for life ! 
The star of Napoleon had set indeed. 

Then Byron, the Enghsh poet, wrote in true English 
denunciatory style : 

" 'Tis done — but yesterday a king! 

And aimed with kings to strive — 
And now thou art a nameless thing, 
So abject — yet alive 1 



78 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Is this the man of thousand thrones, 

Who strewed our earth with hostile bones? 

And can he thus survive ? 
Since he, miscalled the Morning Star, 
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far. 

Ill minded manl why scourge thy kind. 

Who bowed so low the knee ? 
By gazing on thyself grown blind. 
Thou taught'st the rest to see. 
With might unquestioned — power to save — ■ 
Thine only gift hath been the grave 
To those that worshipped thee; 
Nor, till thy fall, could mortals guess 
Ambition's less than littleness." 

And then, looking over the whole world, blood-soaked and 
wreck-strewn after so many years of war, — the fruit of 
man's ambition, and the desperate struggle of the nations 
to preserve the old and selfish aristocracies, — Byron closed 
his fervid, stinging " Ode to Napoleon," with this stanza of 
peculiar interest to us, as coming from an English aristo- 
crat : — 

" Where may the wearied eye repose, 
When gazing on the great ; 
Where neither guilty glory glows 
Nor despicable state ? 
Yes — one — the first — the last — the best — - 
The Cincinnatus of the West, 
Whom envy dared not hate, 
Bequeath'd the name of Washington, 

To make men blush there was but one I " 

Even as the poet wrote this appreciative verse, the land 
of Washington was in sore need of " the first — the last — 
the best " to guide it through the troubled waters into 
which Napoleon's hand had helped to steer it. For Wash- 



HOW 'NAPOLEON'S STAR SET AT LAST. 79 

ington believed in "adjustment;" he begged his country- 
men to keep out of foreign complications, and yet, in time 
of peace, to prepare for war. He and his successor, John 
Adams, had held the new and weak republic free from such 
entanglements. But Jefferson, with a hatred of England, 
and a leaning toward republican France, had scorned com- 
promise and adjustment ; he never yielded anything to 
English demands ; but, at the same time, he neglected to 
strengthen the defences of the country so as to be able 
to back up this pugnacious attitude. Madison, the next 
president, adopted Jefferson's methods, but had neither 
his spirit nor ability, and when Napoleon, bent on his self- 
ish "continental system," sought to cripple England, and 
embroil her with America, in June, 181 2, America en- 
tered into the world-struggle, as Washington had begged 
his countrymen not to do, and declared war against Eng- 
land. 

The war of 1 8 1 2 is not one of which Americans may 
feel proud. It was an avoidable war ; it was a leader- 
less war ; it was an ineffectual war. Arbitration might 
have prevented it ; but Napoleon had no wish to see it 
prevented. A great leader Hke Washington might have 
organized victory ; but the generals of the army were 
either superannuated Continentals or political place-hunters. 
It might have led to an abatement of the tyranny of the 
sea which England exercised ; but the very things for 
which America went to war were not even mentioned in 
the treaty of peace. 

America's victories on the sea, however, gave the first 
successful blow at Great Britain's claim to "rule the seas." 
The effect of these victories in England were, as Green 



8o THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

says, "out of all proportion to their importance;" while 
Andrew Jackson's marvellous victory over Wellington's 
veterans at New Orleans, unnecessary, because fought 
after peace had been declared, gave to the close of a 
stupidly mismanaged land war a glory which has never 
been [forgotten, and which is, indeed, held by Americans 
as largely constituting the war of 1812. 

This war of 1 8 1 2, however, has been called by enthu- 
siasts the Second War of American Independence. And 
in a certain sense it was. It freed American politics from 
European standards ; it made America American ; it drew 
her sons out of the selfish limits of their own homes, and 
made them a united nation ; and as Dr. Edward Channing 
says, "it led not merely to American independence of 
other nations, but to a breaking away from the hampering 
conditions of colonial life." 

This acquaintanceship of the world was, indeed, one of 
the chief results of the long and cruel war-period that 
closed in 1 8 1 5 . If Napoleon Bonaparte had done nothing 
else, he had drawn the nations out of their old rivalries into 
a gradual knowledge of each other, first for protection and 
then for mutual advantage. The old barriers were broken 
down ; men began to know their neighbors and to think 
for themselves. In thus promoting the world's brotherhood 
Napoleon, called the Great, may be esteemed a great 
public benefactor. 




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"^ 



CHAPTER V. 

HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 

{From i8i^ to 1820.) 

WHEN William Makepeace Thackeray, an English 
boy, born in India, was on his way " home " to 
England, where he had been sent to school, as was the 
custom with English boys born abroad, his ship, on the 
way across, stopped at the English island of St. Helena. 
There, as his black servant took him on a long walk over 
the rocks and hills of that lonely South Atlantic isle, they 
saw a short, stout man walking in a garden. The black 
man stopped, and pointed out to the small English boy, 
the "sight" they had crossed the island to see. 

"That is he," said the black servant to the British child ; 
" that is Bonaparte ! He eats three sheep every day, and 
all the little children he can lay hands on." 

The small boy swallowed the story whole, and looked 
with horror at "the Corsican ogre," as men called him. 
For young William Makepeace Thackery and his black 
Calcutta servant were not the only ones who held that 
legendary opinion of the fallen Emperor of the French. 

But in 181 5 the age of Napoleon closed. The man who 
for ten years and more had been the dominant force — 
the one great man of the world — had fallen from his high 
estate. 

The age of Napoleon closed ; but his influence remained 

81 



82 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

for years to vex the minds of kings, and inspire the hopes 
of seekers after progress. Heavy as was his hand upon 
the nations, limitless as was his ambition, and bloody as 
was his pathway to power, the good he accomplished could 
not be undone. " Never before," says the Englishman 
Mackenzie, "had any man inflicted upon his fellows 
miseries so appalling ; never before did one man's hand 
scatter seeds destined to produce a harvest of political 
changes so vast and so beneficent." 

And that master in French literature, Victor Hugo, 
threw upon the screen the preponderating shadow of this 
world-troubler, who, harmless at St. Helena, was still an 
ever-present menace through the half-dozen years of life in 
exile that Heaven was still to allot to him : 

"Angel or demon! thou — whether of light 
The minister, or darkness — still dost sway 

This age of ours ; thine eagle's soaring flight 
Bears us, all breathless, after it, away. 

The eye that from thy presence fain would stray 

Shuns thee in vain ; thy mighty shadow thrown 
Rests on all pictures of the living day. 
And on the threshold of our time, alone. 

Dazzling, yet sombre, stands thy form, Napoleon ! " 

So the man who had set all the wprld astir " on the 
threshold of our time," as Victor Hugo says, although out 
of harm's way, the prisoner of remorseless England, still 
remained "the world's bugaboo," to frighten children like 
young Thackeray, and keep alive in Europe that spirit of 
bayonet -rule, or what we call militarism, best typified by 
the soldier who was the foremost man of the next decade, 
— Wellington, the conqueror of Napoleon, the victor of 
Waterloo, the soldier-councillor of kings. 



HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 83 

The middle name of that small boy who saw " the Cor- 
sican ogre " at St. Helena, William Makepeace Thackeray, 
best expresses the desire of the world after the fall of 
Napoleon. The world was indeed united to make peace 
and keep it. But the Congress of Vienna, at which the 
Duke of Wellington was England's chief negotiator, and 
where the great powers of Europe met to carve up Napo- 
leon's short-lived empire, and readjust "the balance" of 
Europe, while working for peace, sought to uphold it with 
bayonets, and hedge it with kingly prerogatives. 

Something was happening in the world, however, des- 
tined to dull the bristling bayonets and limit the kingly 
prerogatives. Invention, which is said to be the handmaid 
of peace, though inspired by the energies of such a world- 
stirrer and warrior as Napoleon, was already stimulating 
the productive forces of the world, even as the awakening 
of the people was stimulating its intellectual forces. 

When Waterloo was fought, steamboats, dismissed by 
Napoleon, when offered for his consideration, as "mere 
toys," were sailing the rivers of America and England ; 
the electric telegraph, also contemptuously put aside by 
Napoleon when suggested to him by Sommering of Mu- 
nich, as a " German notion," was gradually working its way 
toward practical use ; and George Stephenson, the English- 
man, had just invented the locomotive. Steam and elec- 
tricity, the greatest civilizing and unifying forces of the 
Nineteenth Century, by means of which, could he have ap- 
preciated their value. Napoleon might perhaps have com- 
pleted his dream of conquest, and cemented his power, 
were, as the conqueror fell, preparing for their great 
mission of revolutionizing and developing the world. 



84 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

The power of mind, also, was asserting itself ; intellec- 
tual thought was becoming more widely diffused ; poets, 
philosophers, teachers, scientists, and enthusiasts were 
finding a more extended audience, as the people learned to 
listen and appreciate ; and, though war had paralyzed edu- 
cation, the schoolmaster followed fast upon the vanishing 
trumpet-call. The results of revolution and imperialism 
were of advantage, even though desolation and death had 
walked beside the insurgent and the conqueror. 
. Scott's " Marmion " and Moore's " Irish Melodies " ap- 
peared at the very height of Napoleonic power ; Niebuhr's 
" Roman History," which worked almost an overturn in the 
way of telling history, was published when Prussia lay at 
the feet of her conqueror; and Byron "awoke one morning 
and found himself famous " when, in 1812, the first cantos 
of his remarkable " Childe Harold " were published — and 
Napoleon was retreating from Moscow. Schiller's great 
work in German literature had closed with his grand climax 
of "William Tell " in 1804; but Goethe survived the death 
of the old order of things, and produced his masterpiece 
" Faust" — the first part, at least — in 1808 (the year when 
Napoleon met him at Erfurt), published " Elective Affin- 
ities" in 1809, and began the issue of his autobiography — 
"Truth and Poetry from my Own Life" — in 181 1. 

The interview between Goethe and Napoleon at Erfurt, 
in the midst of emperors, kings, and princes gathered at 
the behest of the imperial Corsican, was the meeting of 
the two greatest Europeans then living ; but it is said that 
Goethe was drawn to Erfurt to meet Talma, even more 
than to see Napoleon. 

Talma was the greatest actor of his time; though Kemble 



HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 85 

and Kean and Mrs. Siddons were still the chief stars of the 
English stage, and Schroder, at Hamburg, was striving to 
place Shakspere on the German stage. Neither in Eng- 
land nor America, however, was the theatre considered 
respectable or "proper" in the first quarter of the Nine- 
teenth Century, and even great actors could not at once 
change this opinion. Religion, which is or has been too 
often a cloak for intolerance, gave the serious tone to teach- 
ing, criticism, and life which appeared wherever there was 
a protest against French follies and European insincerities ; 
but this, in turn, led to a deeper study and a more search- 
ing criticism, which gradually began to broaden and liberal- 
ize the religious thought, alike of Europe and of America. 
Criticism, which occupied itself with religious teachings, 
extended itself also to educational methods ; but these 
moved slowly, and, throughout Europe, in those first years 
of a curbed but gradually increasing revolt against the 
Napoleonic despotism, the student was the first to protest, 
to revolt, and to rush to arms. The University of Jena 
was a "breeding-ground" for democratic ideas; the stu- 
dents who had fought at Waterloo formed themselves into 
a great seoret society to preserve the independence and 
establish the unity of Germany ; while, in the castle where 
Luther defied both pope and emperor, five hundred stu- 
dents agreed to spread the idea of liberty through all the 
universities of the Fatherland, and adopted the college 
banner of black, red, and yellow, which speedily became 
liberty's colors in Germany. It was Korner, the student 
of Leipsic and Vienna, who woke Germany to passionate 
enthusiasm by his terrible but stirring summons to re- 
sistance: — 



86 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

" My people, wake 1 The signal-fires are smoking ; 

Bright breaks the light of Freedom from the north ; 
'Tis time thy steel in foemen's hearts was reeking. 
My people, wake ! The signal-fires are smoking ; 

The field is white; ye reapers, hasten forth ! 
The last, the highest hope lies in the swoi^d ; 

Home to thy bleeding breast their lances strain; 
Make way for freedom ! Let thy blood be poured, 

To cleanse thy Gennan land from every stain." 

But it was, also, the schoolboys of Paris and the 
students of the Polytechnic who made the last and most 
desperate stand against the allied invaders at the barricades 
of Paris in 1814 ; and it was the students of the University 
of Moscow, the cradle of the great Russian nationality, 
who, stirred to action by the songs of Zhukovski (whose 
"Poet in the Russian Camp" was, we are told, on the lips 
of all who loved the fatherland), lighted the fires that left 
the " holy city " of Russia a useless pile of ruins at the 
feet of the invader ; and that same year, in the famous 
Lyceum of the Czar, near St. Petersburg, a small boy was 
going to school whose songs, springing from the days of 
Russia's fight for leadership, were to make Alexander 
Pushkin the greatest poet of the Czar's dominions. It 
was he who first aroused the real spirit of liberty in Russia, 
braving exile and death, again and again, and making him- 
self so surely the poet of the people that what he says of 
himself — as the poet rather than Alexander Pushkin — is 
not nearly as conceited as it sounds in the lines he called 
" a Monument : " — 

" I've raised myself no statue made with hands, — 
The people's path to it no weeds will hide, 
Rising with no submissive head it stands 
Above the pillar of Napoleon's pride. 



HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 8/ 

No 1 I shall never die : in sacred strains 

My soul survives my dust and flees decay ; 
And famous shall I be while there remains 

A single poet 'neath the light o£ day. 
Through all great Russia wlQ go forth my fame, 
And every tongue in it will name my name, 

And by the nation long shall I be loved. 
Because my lyre their nobler feelings moved: 
Because I strove to serve them with my song, 
And called forth mercy for the fallen throng. 
Hear God's command, O muse, obediently. 

Nor dread reproach, nor claim the poet's bay; 
To praise and blame alike indifferent be 

And let fools say their say." 



The "fallen throng" throughout the civilized world was 
striving to lift itself into manhood before 1820 came 
around. The example of America, the brilliancy of 
France's mighty effort, the awakening spirit of German 
unity born of German defeat, all these had their effect 
upon men who thought and men who dared to act. 

From this came the " glorious discontent " that, so we 
are assured, " helped the people of England contrast the 
wrongs they were suffering with the rights they ought to 
have;" that led the "liberals" in Spain to rise in their 
demand for constitutional rights ; that made the secret 
society of the Abruzzi — the " charcoal-burners "— the 
Carbonari — to stand as the champions of national liberty 
in Italy and southern France ; and that stirred the people 
of Central and South America to cast off the yoke of 
Spanish and Portuguese proprietorship which, for more 
than three hundred years, had weighed so heavily upon 
them. 

There, in the languorous tropics and under the Southern 



88 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Cross, a people of mingled bloods had, through generations 
of oppression, been slowly feeling their way toward inde- 
pendence. Ineffectual risings against the power of Spain 
had been attempted, from that descendant of the Incas of 
Peru, tortured for rebellion near the close of the eighteenth 
century, to the brilliant failure of Miranda — the "knight- 
errant of liberty" as he has been called — who almost 
succeeded, and died in a treacherous captivity in the 
Spanish prisons of Cadiz. 

No reliable leader, however, from the revolutionists of 
South America appeared until the rise of Simon Bolivar of 
Caracas, sometimes called the " Washington of South 
America." In 1805 this fiery young patriot had taken an 
oath on Mount Aventine, above the ruins of republican 
Rome, to give " liberty to the land of the Andes, and to 
pledge his life to the freedom of his native land." 

Spain's power in Europe was beaten down before the 
imperial will of Napoleon ; Joseph Bonaparte, ousting Fer- 
dinand the Bourbon, was declared king of Spain ; the 
Spanish colonies in America refused to accept the change 
of rulers ; and, in the disturbances that led to the return 
of the Bourbons, they attempted to govern themselves, and 
openly revolted against both the enforced French king and 
the regency that attempted to rule in the name of the 
exiled Ferdinand. 

Divided into three parties, — the royalists, or Bourbon 
supporters, the imperialists, or Bonaparte adherents, and 
the patriots, or independence party, — the struggle for 
freedom and possession went on for several years in the 
colonies of Spanish South America. The exiled king of 
Portugual had fled to Brazil, and there set up his throne ; 



HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 89 

but through the colonies of Spain, from California to Buenos 
Ayres and Chili, revolt grew ; and under the lead of Itur- 
bide the Mexican, Bolivar the Colombian, and San Martin 
the Argentinian, the people fought for independence. 

Bolivar's capture of Caracas, in August, 18 13, gave him 
the title of " the Liberator ; " but it was years before liber- 
ation really came. Defeated again and again, but constant 
ever to his youthful vow to liberate his native land, in spite 
of disaster, treachery, exile, and attempted assassination, he 
held firm to his purpose, and, with the help of the negro 
republic of Hayti, returned to gather a new army of ten 
thousand men, and overthrow the Spanish forces at Angos- 
tura in Venezuela, and at Boyaca in Colombia. These 
successes practically freed the northern portion of South 
America from Spanish control, and Bolivar was made presi- 
dent of the newly delivered land. 

It was on the seventeenth of December, 18 19, that 
Bolivar proclaimed the new Republic of Colombia, after six 
years of struggle. Meantime, the patriots of the south, 
under the lead of the heroic San Martin, were also fighting 
their way to freedom. 

In September, 18 14, San Martin began to recruit the 
" army of the Andes " in the western part of Buenos Ayres, 
at the very foot of the great mountains. In two years he 
had a well-drilled and well-clothed army of nearly five 
thousand men ; and under the streaming " flag of the sun " 
— the banner of liberty — he started upon his famous 
march over the Andes, in January, 1 8 1 7, — more wonder- 
ful, because more difficult and at a far greater height, than 
was even Napoleon's crossing the Alps into Italy. The 
Spaniards of Chili made a bold stand against the invaders ; 



90 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

but the patriot army was well generalled, and after more 
than a year of fighting, San Martin totally overthrew the 
Spanish power at the battle of the Maipo, a river of Chili ; 
and Argentina and Chili were free. 

Thereupon San Martin determined to still farther cripple 
the Spanish power and liberate Peru ; in the north, Bolivar 
was also deciding upon the same attempt, and had so far 
extended his patriotic desires as to declare himself, not 
simply a Colombian, but a South American. 

"My only ambition," he said, "is the freedom of my 
fellow-citizens." Thereupon he determined to achieve, if 
possible, the liberation of all South America from the 
Spanish yoke, and, after completing his conquests in the 
north, to boldly lead an army against the Spaniards in 
Peru. 

In Mexico matters were not so favorable to liberty. 
The revolutionists were less ably led ; and young Iturbide, 
who dreamed of independence, but had no desire for a 
republic, hoped to- secure his ends through royalist or 
Bourbon means. So there was a struggle for leadership, 
and the customary Spanish-American rivalries ; but still, 
though its leaders fell, the spirit of liberty grew, and in 
1820 the revolutionists rallied to the side of Iturbide, and 
royalists and patriots joined for one last stand against the 
Spanish viceroy. 

In Spain itself, after Napoleon's downfall, the weakness 
of the restored Ferdinand in his ill-success against the 
American colonies and his endeavors at home to fall back 
upon the old Bourbon methods which Napoleon had over- 
thrown, drove the liberals of Spain to revolt. The sale of 
Florida to the United States in 18 19, and the discontent 



HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 9 1 

of the poorly-paid soldiers of the Spanish army, increased 
this spirit of discontent, and revolt became organized revo- 
lution at Cadiz. 

In Italy and Greece, too, the spirit of independence was 
constantly flashing into revolt ; but, throughout Europe, 
the desire for peace after the long struggle against Napo- 
leon's ambitions was sufficient to hold in check for a time 
the curbed power of discontent ; and the force of the bayo- 
net, added to England's determination for peace, held the 
restored forces of absolutism in place, so that in 1820, it 
seemed as if Napoleon's influence had been overcome, and 
that the five great powers of Europe had achieved the 
restoration of the old-time monarchies. 

But the progress of independence was really going 
forward among the people themselves. In England the 
laboring classes, ground down by the huge debts which 
the wars against France had created, merged their grum- 
bling discontents into a great political movement, with the 
demand for parliamentary reform and the rights of the 
people as its banner cry. 

The leader of the people against the aristocracy in this 
"domestic battle" was William Cobbett, the son of a 
peasant farmer of Surrey. A residence in the United 
States had aroused in him the desire for political liberty ; 
and his writings, which were read " beside every cottage 
hearth in England," led to an ever-increasing popular de- 
mand for representation in parliament and for universal 
suffrage. 

" Misgovernment," declared Cobbett, "is the source of 
the people's misery. Reform parliament, and demand your 
rights." 



92 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

The lords and aristocrats of Great Britain saw in this 
popular discontent the threat of a new rebellion. The 
government sought to put it down by force ; and when, 
maddened by the scarcity of money and the pangs of real 
hunger, sixty thousand people assembled in St. Peter's 
Fields at Manchester to petition for relief, the soldiers 
charged upon them with tragic results, and the miserable 
Prince-regent — falsely called " the first gentleman of 
Europe" — thanked the magistrates for this brutal and 
cowardly act. 

"He the first gentleman of Europe!" cried the indig- 
nant, sham-hating Thackeray ; " there is no stronger satire 
on the proud English society of that day than that they 
admired this monstrous image of pride, vanity, and weak- 
ness who pretended to reign over England." 

That was in 1819, and George was then Prince Regent. 
In 1820 his father, the insane George the Third, died in his 
enforced restraint, a broken-down old man — sightless, 
deaf, his reason gone. The regent became George the 
Fourth, and, as Thackeray says, "pretended to reign." 
But, over the bier of stupid, obstinate, but brave, and well- 
meaning George the Third, to whom America owes so 
much, because his obstinacy forced her into independence 
and greatness, Thackeray, who loved sincerity, appealed to 
his "kin beyond sea:" "O brothers! speaking the same 
dear mother tongue," he said ; " O comrades ! enemies no 
more ; let us take a mournful hand together as we stand 
by this royal corpse and call a truce to battle. Low he 
lies to whom the proudest used to kneel, and who was cast 
lower than the poorest ; dead, whom millions prayed for in 
vain. Driven off his throne, buffeted by rude hands, with 



HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 93 

his children in revolt — our 'Lear'! Hush! strife and 
quarrel, over his solemn grave ! Sound, trumpets, a 
mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, upon this pageant, 
his grief, his awful tragedy." 

As for America:ns, when 1820 came they were too busy 
and too prosperous to bear any real malice against poor, 
crazy old King George, though it has ever been the fash- 
ion, even to this day, to misunderstand and malign him. 
The United States of America, in that year that laid their 
old-time tyrant low, were on the verge of what is known 
in our history as "the Era of Good Feeling." 

James Monroe was president ; the Union embraced 
twenty-three States; Jackson, the "hero of New Orleans," 
was also the " conqueror of Florida ; " the tariff-act of 
1 8 16 had enabled the manufacturers of New England to 
safely weather the "panic of 18 19," and the real struggle 
between "protection and free trade" was scarcely begun. 
The question of negro slavery, however, which, thanks to 
Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin, had grown of 
vital importance to the Southern States, was already becom- 
ing a national problem, and grew into still greater impor- 
tance, when, in 1 8 1 9, the admission of Missouri as a State 
came before Congress. Should it be a free or a slave State? 
It was north of the dividing-line which, under the name of 
"Mason's and Dixon's" limited the northward spread of sla- 
very, while the Arkansas territory, cut off from Missouri, 
was below that line. Proposals to restrict the extension of 
slavery caused much discussion ; and the struggle between 
free soil and slave soil, which was in time to convulse the 
entire Union, had already begun. 

In 1820 the population of the United States had grown 



94 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

close upon ten millions. It had increased threefold since 
the close of the American Revolution, and emigrants from 
over the sea were constantly swelling the total. In all the 
world it seemed to be the only land of freedom ; and its 
boundless possibilities were already beginning to be appre- 
ciated by the statesmen of Europe, as well as by those who 
sought it as a home. Industries of all kinds were growing 
rapidly, especially those connected with cotton, wool, and 
iron. 

The increase of trade and the development of commerce 
made better methods of transportation and communication 
necessary, and the inventive mind of the Yankee was seek- 
ing to meet the new requirements. Steam was gradually 
taking the place of the uncertain winds and the slow-going 
horse and ox. Before 1812 steamboats were running on 
the Hudson, the Delaware, the Ohio, and the St. Lawrence 
rivers. By 181 5 steam ferry-boats were plying between 
New York and Brooklyn; in 18 16 a steamboat was in 
operation from New Orleans to Louisville; and in 18 19 the 
first steamship crossed the ocean from Savannah to Liver- 
pool. 

Still, progress throughout the world in 1820, though sure, 
was, indeed, slow. Canals, to be sure, were improving the 
means of communication in all civilized countries ; in 1 8 1 5 
small coasting steamers were in use between ports and 
harbors, though stages and mail-coaches were the only 
means for quick and comfortable travel by land. 

So great a scientist as Sir Humphry Davy, whose in- 
vention of the safety-lamp, in 18 15, had saved hundreds 
of miners' lives, declared the lighting of London by gas to 
be impracticable ; photography was only thought of as an 



HOW THE DESIRE FOR INDEPENDENCE GREW. 95 

unexplored science, and geology had not yet attempted the 
explanation of the real formation of the earth ; medicine 
and surgery were little more than crude means of fighting 
off disease and death, and pain was still an unconquerable 
and destroying terror ; prisons were places of horror, tor- 
ture, and living death ; the real improvement of the crimi- 
nal had scarcely been thought of, while hospitals and 
asylums were but a trifle better than prisons; the "vam- 
pire of war," as it has well been called, was still the 
blood-sucker of civilization, with but little thought among 
statesmen of ameliorating its horrors, or preventing it by 
arbitration ; philanthropy had not yet grasped the problem 
of how to secure a " broader and juster brotherhood " ; and 
creed, rather than Christianity, guided the religion of the 
world ; every land except America had a State Church ; 
while Protestants made laws against Catholics, Catholics 
ostracized Protestants ; both legislated against the Jews, 
and all the other religions of the world were simply set 
down as paganism or heathenism, without a redeeming 
quality. 

There was still much to be done to set the world moving 
along the pathway of progress. Intellectual growth was 
slow, although the inspiration of war had quickened the facul- 
ties of people. Germany and England were the chief rivals 
for the leadership in literature ; while of America, where 
intellectual thought, was, itself, in what is called the forma- 
tive stage, Sydney Smith, the English wit, scholar, and 
critic, said contemptuously in 1820, that it had done "abso- 
lutely nothing for the sciences, for art, for literature," and 
added the scornful query, " In the four quarters of the 
globe, who reads an American book ? " 



4 



"All revohiiions, like armies o>t ike 
march, advance with pioneers in front 
. , . Sicch was Simon Bolivar of 
Caracas. A true child of that sunny 
land, his tejnper was fiery and caprl- 
cums, but he was brave and far-sighted, 
and capable of long sustained effort." 
Clements Robert Markham. 



THE AGE OF BOLIVAR. 
INDEPENDENCE. 

{1820-18^0.) 



SIMON BOLIVAR, 

LIBERA TOR OF SOUTH AMERICA. 
Born Caracas, Venezuela, fitly 24, 1783. 
Died San Pedro, Colombia, Dec. 17, 1830. 



o 

s 
J 



CHAPTER VL 

HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. 

{From 1820 to 182^) 

AS if in answer to Sydney Smith's shaft of mingled 
ridicule and reproach, the very next year after he 
asked his famous question, Washington Irving, William 
Cullen Bryant, and James Fenimore Cooper began the real 
literature of America. 

1 82 1, indeed, has been well called "the birth-year of 
American literature in all its departments;" for in 1821 
Washington Irving published "The Sketch Book," and 
established his claim to the title of " The Father of Ameri- 
can Literature ; " Cooper delighted England as well as 
America with "The Spy," and won the right to be con- 
sidered " the first American author to carry our flag outside 
the limits of our language ; " Bryant's " Poems," also pub- 
lished in that year, established the American revolt from 
Pope and his copyists, and Christopher North, the English 
critic, declared that " ' Thanatopsis ' alone would establish 
a claim to genius." 

That "genius," as was intimated in the last chapter, 
was to find formidable rivals in the literary giants of Eng- 
land and Germany. Keats, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, and Southey were making English verse glori- 
ous ; Scott and Lover, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austin, 
were the favorite English story-tellers ; Hallam was the 

99 



lOO THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

great historian, Foster the essayist, Romilly and Wilber- 
force were authorities in law and philanthropy ; and the 
great British reviews — the Edinburgh, the Quarterly, 
and the Westminster — were marking new tendencies of 
thought in English philosophy, criticism, legislation, and 
literature. 

In Germany a new school was succeeding that of Goethe 
and Schiller. The patriotic upheaval that led to the over- 
throw of Napoleon opened the way to deeper and more 
practical intellectual expression, which — smothered and 
shadowed for a while by the spirit of militarism and reac- 
tion which thoroughly-frightened Europe permitted to hold 
and disgrace it — was to burst finally into the development 
of that intelligent national spirit that was finally to redeem 
and ennoble German thought and effort. Humboldt, 
indeed, was still living and writing in France ; and Schlegel, 
though a professor at Bonn, was often long absent from 
his German home ; while Fouque, the German with a 
French name, whose " Undine " is still dearly loved by 
young and old, was a worker in Paris quite as much as at 
his Prussian home, to which, an invalid soldier, he had 
retired when peace came once again. 

Paris, indeed, was still, in spite of all its misfortunes and 
transitions, deemed the centre of European life and cul- 
ture ; and France, reduced to its original limits by the 
mandates of its conquerors, was, nevertheless, the home of 
intellectual achievement. The names of Chateaubriand 
and Madame de Stael stand foremost among those who 
helped by the pen, as did others by the sword, to the 
overthrow of Napoleon's imperialism ; while the former, 
as the beginner of a new school in literary creation (though 



HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. lOl 

SO Stout a supporter of the Bourbons that the Louis who 
succeeded Napoleon declared that Chateaubriand's help in 
his councils was as good as one hundred thousand men), 
prepared the way for such later productions of the new 
France as Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac. Both 
these wonderful Frenchmen were boys when Waterloo was 
fought, and were laying the foundations of that marvellous 
intellectual power that was, before the Nineteenth Century 
reached middle age, to startle the world by its originality 
and achievement. 

The soldier, however, rather than the thinker, in the 
years between 1820 and 1825, was still the dominant power 
in the world. Wellington had not yet developed into the 
statesman; and when, in 1822, the merchants and bankers 
of London presented to the duke the splendid " Wellington 
shield," it marked the devotion of the English nation to 
"the greatest British soldier" of the century. 

Meantime, in far off St, Helena, the man who was most 
responsible for England's glorification of Wellington, the 
man whom the " Iron Duke " flung into defeat at Water- 
loo, had ceased to trouble the world to which, though 
rigorously imprisoned, he had still been a bugbear. Napo- 
leon was dead. On the fifth of May, 182 1, the conqueror 
of Europe breathed his last, and Europe gave a great sigh 
of relief. 

" Wellington has sent me here to perish on a rock," he 
said of his victor ; but to the last he hoped for escape, 
restoration, triumph, and glory. 

" I closed the abyss of anarchy, and brought order out of 
chaos," he declared of himself. " I cleansed the Revolu- 
tion, ennobled the people, and made the kings strong. I 



102 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

have awakened all ambitions, rewarded all merit, and 
enlarged the borders of glory." 

It was, of course, a piece of boasting ; but, in a sense, 
it was the truth. The ''thin young man of 1792," as 
Taine calls him, " with lank hair, hollow cheeks, dried up 
with ambition, his heart full of romantic ideas, who 
destroyed five armies, became master, declared that any 
career is open to talent, and impelled others along with him 
in his enterprises," had opened a new highway for the 
world of the Nineteenth Century, and by his very down- 
fall had raised the hopes of all men who dreamed of 
progress and of liberty. 

But this "giant five feet high," as Balzac has epitomized 
him, stood, so that same great Frenchman prophetically 
declared less than ten years after the Corsican's death, 
"for a future which he alone saw." He stood for a 
future greater even than he himself could comprehend ; 
for he awoke the spirit of effort and progress, and, as 
Taine estimates him, " impelled others along with him in 
his enterprises." Even the relentless enemies he made 
were instruments for the progress of the race ; and the 
world which feared him living and maligned him dead has 
only lately begun to understand why God, who makes even 
the wrath of men to praise him, permitted Napoleon 
Bonaparte. 

The shaking-up he had given to kings and dynasties 
kept the world unsettled for years. We have already seen 
how it impelled South America to revolution ; roused the 
homeland-lovers of Italy, its half-million "Carbonari," to 
protest against the blundering powers who sought to carve 
the Italy Napoleon had united into petty and despotic prin- 



HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. 103 

cipalities ; set Spain to attempt the working out of its 
own salvation, by forcing the stupid Bourbon king to yield 
liberal reforms, and encouraged Greece to revolt against 
her Turkish oppressors. 

To stop these popular protests, and still this shaking-up 
of thrones, the troubled kings kept their soldiers under 
arms, and the Wellington spirit of militarism smothered 
insurrections, and held the people in check. Austria over- 
ran Italy ; France marched an army into Spain ; Turkey 
turned her ruthless destroyers upon Greece ; and every- 
where the spirit of liberty was combated, and for the time 
suppressed ; for liberty, like a smouldering fire, bursts out 
fiercely again and again, only to be smothered by the 
weight of force flung upon it, until such time as the force 
itself, becoming fuel for the flame, contributes at last to 
the mighty blaze of freedom. 

Across the seas, this blaze of freedom burned more 
brightly in America than anywhere else. Led by the ex- 
ample and energy of Bolivar, Spanish America gradually 
worked out its salvation. In 1821 Brazil announced its in- 
dependence of Portugal ; and when the prince regent, Dom 
Pedro, was sent to crush rebellion, the people shrewdly 
made him the leader of revolt by naming him Perpetual 
Defender; and in October, 1822, he was proclaimed con- 
stitutional emperor, and Brazil declared itself independent. 

Peru was the decisive battle-ground of South American 
independence. San Martin from the south, and Bolivar 
from the north, invaded the last stronghold of Spain. The 
two "liberators" met at Guayaquil, in Ecuador, on the 
twenty-fifth of July in 1822. There San Martin generously 
and patriotically yielded the leadership to Bolivarj on the 



104 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

twenty-fourth of December the united armies won the 
crowning victory of Ayacucho in Peru, and Simon Bolivar 
had established the independence of South America. 

This earnest effort for liberty in the south profoundly 
affected the people of the United States, whose historic 
struggle for independence in 1776 had been the spark that 
had first lighted the torch of liberty. Sympathizing with 
all movements for deliverance and republican rule, the 
"Americans" — as the people of the United States have 
ever been called — recognized the commercial and political 
value of an independent South America, and extended to 
the patriots who followed the lead of Bolivar recognition 
and support. Money was appropriated by Congress to send 
diplomatic missions to the "independent nations on the 
American continent," and interference in American affairs 
by the princes and potentates of Europe was sternly for- 
bidden. 

This was in 1823. That year marks an epoch in the 
history of America as well as in the story of the Nine- 
teenth Century. The powers of Europe — notably Russia, 
Austria, and Prussia — had, in 181 5, formed a league for 
the professed purpose of uniting the European governments 
in a " Christian brotherhood," to be called the Holly Alli- 
ance. Its real purpose was to keep things as they were, 
exclude all Bonapartes from power, and overawe the spirit 
of popular liberty. Later, all the sovereigns of Europe 
excepting the king of England, joined this mutual admira- 
tion society. The Czar of Russia was the acknowledged 
head of the alliance ; and, among other things, this kingly 
syndicate considered the crushing out of the Spanish- 
American republics. 




HOW THE FIRST QIJARTERENDED. 105 



Thereupon England, the only nation that had not joined 
the Alliance, asked the United States what they were go- 
ing to do about it, and suggested that England and America 
unite against the so-called Holy Alliance. 

But America was not yet ready to join England in ex- 
treme measures. John Quincy Adams was secretary of 
state, and, like the wise statesman he was, saw that such a 
union would only embitter the European powers, and per- 
haps lead to a movement against the republic which might 
give Europe the footing in America that was especially to 
be guarded against. 

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence — I 
conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens," Washington 
had said in his immortal Farewell Address, "the jealousy 
of a free people ought to be constantly awake. ... It is 
our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with 
any portion of the foreign world." 

This sage advice of 1796 was seen, by the wise heads of 
1823, to be still the best course for America. So England's 
offer of friendship and treaty was politely dechned. But 
none the less was the threatened interference of the Holy 
Alliance to be firmly met. 

James Monroe was president of the United States. He 
was the last soldier of the Revolution . to hold that high 
office, and the spirit that had sent him charging against 
the Hessian battery at Trenton on a historic December 
morning determined him to resist foreign aggression. 

In his seventh annual message of December, 1823, he 
put this " spoke in the wheel " of Russia, who already had 
a footing in northwestern America, and was believed to 
covet our western coast. 



I06 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

"The occasion has been judged proper," he wrote, "for 
asserting as a principle that the . American continents by 
the free and independent condition which they have assumed 
and maintain are henceforth not to be considered as sub- 
jects for future colonization by any European power." 

Having thus warned off all foreign colonial trespassing 
on American soil, he added these impressive and important 
words : 

" The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments 
the most friendly in favor of the liberty and happiness of 
their fellow-men on the other side of the Atlantic. In the 
wars of the European powers, in matters relating to them- 
selves, we have never taken any part, nor does it comport 
with our policy to do so. It is only when our rights are 
invaded or seriously menaced, that we resent injuries or 
make preparation for our defence. With the movements 
in this hemisphere we are, of necessity, more intimately 
connected . . . and to the defence of our government 
which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and 
treasure, and matured by the wisdom of our most enlight- 
ened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled 
felicity, this whole nation is devoted. 

" We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable 
relations existing between the United States and the allied 
powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on 
their part to extend their system to any portion of this 
hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. 

" With the existing colonies or dependencies of any 
European power we have not interfered and shall not inter- 
fere. But with the governments who have declared their 
independence, and whose independence we have, in great 



HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. 10/ 

consideration and in just principles, acknowledged, we could 
not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing 
them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, 
by any European power, in any other light than as the 
manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the 
United States." 

This was the official declaration now famous as the 
" Monroe Doctrine." Based upon the farewell plea of 
Washington in 1796 and upon Jefferson's earnest inaugural 
words in 1801 — "peace, commerce, and honest friendship 
with all nations ; entangling alliances with none," — 
accepted by the sober sense of the American people as 
both wise and practical in those days of cautious begin- 
nings, put into words by that great son of a great father, 
John Quincy Adams, — the determination, the writing, and 
the responsibility were James Monroe's, and to him rightly 
belongs the credit of declaring to the world America's 
policy of peace, but of possession and of protection as 
well, — the historic " Monroe Doctrine." 

The world accepted this declaration as decisive and 
final. England, though refused an alliance, recognized a 
principle, and backed up President Monroe's announcement 
with the intimation to the Holy Alliance that any use of 
force in America would be resented by Great Britain ; the 
powers of Europe understood that it was to be "hands off" 
for them in the American continent ; Russia never pro- 
gressed beyond the boundaries of Alaska, and in time 
withdrew altogether ; and from that day to this, with one 
notable exception, European interference in American con- 
trol has been confined to criticism and suggestion, with no 
attempt at force. 



I08 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Balked in America, the Holy Alliance still had its own 
way in Europe. When Italian discontent broke into the 
open revolt of the Carbonari secret societies in 1821, the 
Holy Alliance, handmaiden to that other "unholy " affair, 
the Holy Inquisition, authorized Austria to crush the Italian 
revolution ; and for the time it was crushed. 

But the Holy Alliance, while crushing Italian indepen- 
dence, awoke in a great friend of humanity the hatred of 
tyranny. Byron, exiled from England, mourned over the 
defeat of Italy, flung himself into the struggles of Greece 
toward freedom, extolled the glorious liberty of America, 
and wrote impassioned verses, which, read in every civil- 
ized tongue, kept alive in the hearts of men the determi- 
nation to be free. 

It was the stirring lines of Byron that largely influenced 
the later revolutions in Germany, awoke once more the 
slumbering patriotism of Italy, stirred again and again its 
smothered embers in Spain, helped on the enthusiasm of 
Bolivar in South America, and from the Andes to the Bal- 
kans, kept alive the spark of effort that gradually led the 
world to " strike for its altars and its fires." With all his 
faults and all his failings, Byron, the aristocrat who wor- 
shipped liberty, stands out in those years, between 1820 
and 1825, as he yet remains, their most fascinating person- 
ality, "the largest figure," as Professor Minto declares, "of 
a new era." 

His wonderful poetry wept over the fall of the old com- 
monwealths of Europe, the degradation of Greece, the 
timidity and indifference of patriots, the unaided attempts 
at independence, and gloried in the rise of America. " One 
great clime," he said — 



HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. 109 

" Whose vigorous offspring, by dividing ocean 
Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion 

Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for and 

Bequeathed — a heritage of heart and hand 

And proud distinction from each other land 
Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's notion, 

As if his senseless sceptre were a wand 
Full of the magic of exploded science — 
Still one great clime in full and free defiance 

Yet rears her crest, unconquered and sublime, 
Above the far Atlantic 1 She has taught 

Her Esau brethren that the haughty flag, 

The floating flame of Albion's feebler crag 
May strike to those whose red, right hands have bought 
, Rights cheaply earned with blood." 

The "Esau brethren" of the America whom Byron 
apostrophized, had, for selfish motives, in this " holy alli- 
ance " stamped out Hberalism in southern and western 
Europe ; for selfish motives, also and because they coveted 
the lands of the Turk, they gave first a secret and then an 
open aid to Greece, when she endeavored to throw off the 
yoke of the Ottoman. 

Here, too, Byron's unchained devotion to what an ener- 
getic American of our day has called "the strenuous life," 
flung itself into burning and now famous words to urge 
the Greeks to action : 

" Hereditary bondsmen 1 know ye not 

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow ? 
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought ? 
Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye ? No 1 
True, they may lay your proud despoilers low. 
But not for you will Freedom's altars flame. 

Shades of the Helots ! triumph o'er your foe ; 
Greece 1 change thy lords, thy state is still the same ; 
Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thy days of shame." 



no THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

As Taine the Frenchman says, "Byron wars against 
human roguery." He would trust to no Holy Alliance to 
redeem Greece — 

" Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." 

The Greeks struck that blow in 1821. On land and sea 
they drove their Turkish tyrants, proclaimed their inde- 
pendence in January, 1822, and, even when menaced by 
feud and faction, still struggled on to liberty. Byron, fol- 
lowing his words with deeds, came over from Italy to fight 
in the ranks, and, as their commander-in-chief at Misso- 
longhi, died in 1825 — a martyr to Grecian liberty, whose 
name is still held dear in every Grecian household, and 
whose portrait still holds the place of honor on the wall of 
every home as the popular hero of Greece. 

Two great Turks — or rather Egyptians — came to the 
front in this war of Greek independence, Mehemet Ali and 
Ibrahim Pacha. Conquerors for a while in Greece, they 
were finally defeated by the patriots and their European 
allies — for the Holy Alliance had no wish to see Turkey 
succeed ; but they, too, learned lessons of enlightenment, 
and later set on foot methods of progress which well-nigh 
lifted Egypt out of its bondage to barbarism. So, as has 
ever been the case, both victory and defeat are of advan- 
tage to man. 

Byron's example fired other world-patriots to help the 
cause of Greek independence. From France and Ger- 
many, from Switzerland, from England, and even from dis- 
tant America, came the Philhellenes, or Friends of Greece, 
to fight as volunteers. But even the growing sympathy of 
the world, and such heroic resistance as the siege of Misso- 



HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. Ill 

longhi, did not put a stop to the factional strife among 
the patriots, nor to the steady advance of the murderous 
crescent borne by Ibrahim and his Tur co-Egyptians. The 
sortie of Marco Bozzaris from Missolonghi against the 
Turkish vanguard at Carpenisi made that Greek patriot 
in his victory and his death, through Fitz-Greene Halleck's 
stirring hnes, forever famous, and showed how the sym- 
pathy of the world pulsed in unison with Greek desire 
for freedom — 

" For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's — 
One of the few, the immortal names 
That were not bom to die." 

The miserably selfish Holy Alliance, which had crushed 
out independence in Spain and Italy, and had frowned upon 
the desires of patriots, had no wish for Greek success, ex- 
cept as it might weaken Turkey. "The monarchs of 
Europe," says Dr. Donaldson, "were afraid that the rising 
of the Greeks was only another eruption of democratic 
feeling fostered by the French Revolution, and thought 
that it ought to be suppressed." They gave, therefore, no 
open support or sympathy to the cause ; and it looked, in 
1825, as if the growth of liberty had been cut short in 
Europe by the recognized rulers of the people. Only 
across the Atlantic was independence really won. 

But even in America independence did not mean free- 
dom for all. Progress comes slowly at first ; and while the 
white American, freeing himself from tyranny, still held 
the black man in bondage, the inconsistency of this condi- 
tion of slavery in a land of freedom had not yet struck 
home to the hearts of men. But public opinion was begin- 



112 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

ning to move in the right direction. The last heretic was 
burned in Mexico in 1815, and that very year the break 
from the old-school theology was made by liberalism ; the 
religious advance in America was the forerunner of a 
broader liberty, and the agitation of the anti-slavery re- 
formers throughout the world marked the first assaults 
upon an institution that was as old as the world and error. 
England had abolished the slave-trade in 1807, Napoleon 
in 181 5, the Dutch stopped it in 18 14, the Swedes in 
1 8 1 3, and Great Britain paid money for its extinction by 
Portugal and Spain. The United States, during the Na- 
poleonic wars, had prohibited the importation into its terri- 
tory of negro slaves, and in 1822 had founded, on the 
west coast of Africa, the republic of Liberia as a refuge for 
those civilized blacks who were not permitted to reside as 
citizens in " civilized " lands. 

But while the nations of Europe and the American 
republic combined to stop the nefarious traffic in men 
under the protection of their flags, the African continent, 
from which negro slaves were drawn, was still sunk in the 
barbarism that gave to so much of it the name of " the 
dark continent." 

The least known, although the seat of one of the oldest 
civilizations, and the least important portion of the globe 
politically, this vast Southern continent in the year 1825 
was only just beginning to enlist the attention of scientists 
and explorers. The Moors had long been established along 
the Mediterranean shores ; England, France, Portugal, and 
Holland had foothold or colonies, mostly along the western 
and southern coast ; but the interior was an unknown and 
unexplored land, peopled by savage black tribes, — Ethio- 



HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. I 13 

pian, Hottentot, Kaffir, and other of the negro peoples, 
while the ocean edge of the continent itself was known only 
by the materials it yielded to commerce under the names 
of the Grain Coast, the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, the 
Slave Coast, etc. In 1825 the commercial value of Africa 
wa.s, as I have said, just beginning to be esteemed worthy 
the attention of Europeans, although the unhealthiness of 
its climate and the terrors of its unknown regions kept all, 
except the hardiest, most venturesome, or most greedy of 
civilized man from its borders. 

In the same way commerce, which had first attracted 
Europeans to the still older continent of Asia, had led them 
to conquer and to colonize that heathen land ; and Dutch 
and Danes, Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Britishers, Russians 
and Portuguese, alike, strove for power and possession with 
the fierce and warlike races native to its soil. By 1825 
Russia, pushing into Siberia, had stopped for commercial 
reason and for the Chinese trade, on the banks of the 
Amur River. She was on the point of rupture with Persia ; 
was worrying Turkey and Armenia, and threatening the 
Afghan border. England, gradually reducing the great 
Indian peninsula, was also waiting to pounce upon Afghan- 
istan, whose native owners were at feud, while, in the east, 
she was badgering Burmah into war. Anam was an un- 
willing and grumbling vassal to France, and the fertile 
islands of the South China Sea were rebellious subjects of 
Spain and Holland. Japan and China were still hermit na- 
tions, while the island continent of Australia, wrested by 
England from its aboriginal inhabitants, was just emerging 
from its earliest disastrous contact with white " civilization," 
which had first turned it into a convict colony, but was 



114 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

gradually laying the foundations for industrial and agricul- 
tural improvement. 

So, over the world, as the first quarter of the Nineteenth 
Century closed, hung still the shadow of the sword. Black 
slavery in America, white slavery in Europe, barbarism 
and isolation in Asia, degradation and mystery in Africa — 
all these were upheld by the brute force of men or the 
tyranny of military government. To the age of Napoleon 
had succeeded the age of Wellington ; but out of both had 
come in due time the age of Bolivar — for liberation was 
abroad, independence was the desire of men, and liberty 
their dream. Invention was sharpening intellect and 
doubling production ; philanthropy was emerging from 
dreamland into real effort ; commerce was clearing the 
way for progress ; theology was softening into religion ; 
and men were becoming more like world-lovers and workers 
than merely selfish and narrow localists, with no eye beyond 
their own borders. 

To the student of the century, 1825 shows a marked 
improvement in manliness, method, and achievement over 
1800, even though aristocracy was still the governing 
power, and the cause of the people moved but slowly 
toward results. But in 1825 Abraham Lincoln was a boy 
in his teens ; so, too, were Tennyson, Whittier, Longfellow, 
Gladstone, and John Bright. Sarmento, a boy of eleven, 
was perhaps just beginning to dream of what he was to do 
for his fellowmen as South America's intellectual liberator 
— the educational hero of his continent ; and Victor Em- 
manuel, a boy of five, was breathing the love of Italy with 
the airs that swept down the Piedmont Alps, Cavour, 
Mazzini, and Garibaldi, too, were boys in their Italian 



HOW THE FIRST QUARTER ENDED. n^ 

homes ; and as the old Lafayette, returning from his last 
visit to a grateful America in 1824, still dreamed his dream 
of an impossible epoch of constitutional liberty in Bourbon 
France, young Louis Kossuth, who later was to make an 
American trip as hero and patriot, was hurrahing in the 
ranks of Hungarian protest, and the seven-year old Alex- 
ander of Russia was learning, even in the heart of despot- 
ism, lessons that were in after years to blossom into his 
greatest gift of freedom to men. The boys of 1825 were 
prophetic of the sunrise that was to come ; for the old 
order was surely changing to the new. 



CHAPTER VII. 

WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. 
(From 182J to iSjo.) 

ON the twenty-sixth of October, 1825, Governor De 
Witt CHnton of the State of New York officially 
opened the Erie Canal, thus uniting the Great Lakes and 
the Atlantic, and sending the western development of the 
United States forward with a mighty stride ; on the very 
next day, October the twenty-seventh, George Stephenson, 
in England, opened the Stockton and Darlington Railway, 
and ran the first locomotive drawing cars that carried pas- 
sengers and freight. The new era of achievement and 
the conquest of time and space had begun. 

On the twenty-fifth of October, 1825, Szechenyi, the 
apostle of Hungarian emancipation, in a speech before the 
Diet, sprang into leadership as the advocate of a new 
Hungary, independent of Austrian control ; and, on the 
twenty-sixth of the following December, Russian revolu- 
tionists in the square of the Senate made a bold but inef- 
fectual stand against their despotic autocrat ; but, when 
they shouted for the Constitution they demanded, the 
soldiers, whom they thought to overawe by their demon- 
stration, hurrahed too, thinking, however, that this new 
word, " Constitution," was a cheer for the wife of the crown 
prince, Constantine. So unknown a term was Constitu- 
tonal Freedom in despotic Russia in 1825. 

116 




TYPES OF THE } 
AGE OF BOLIVAR \ 



Eoi.lVAK 

Byron 
Stephenson 



Monroe 

KORNER 

Heber 



WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. II7 

That very year, too, though white Christian civihzation 
was girding itself for its wrestle for the possession of the 
world, Christianity throughout the thirty parts of the 
known world was but in the proportion of five to twenty- 
five, and the Japanese Yeddo and the Chinese Pekin, 
closed to every effort of this same white civilization, led all 
others as the most populous cities of the world. Christian 
civilization had a work on hand, before which the fabled 
labors of Hercules were but child's play. 

But the work was begun manfully, even though uncon- 
sciously. In that same year of 1825 the first steam voyage 
from England to India was made by Captain Johnson in 
the Enterprise; and as, rounding "the Stormy Cape" 
(where English colonists in South Africa were developing 
the region which English enterprise had wrested from Dutch 
incompetency), the wondrous craft steamed into the Indian 
Ocean, it was the forerunner of that indomitable spirit of 
English expansion which neither wind nor tides could 
baffle as it set out to advance its flag in every quarter of 
the globe — "a power," as the American Webster, in now 
famous words, declared in less than ten years after the 
voyage of the Enterprise, " which has dotted over the 
surface of the whole globe with her possessions and mili- 
tary ports, whose moving drum-beat following the sun and 
keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with 
one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of 
England." 

That voyage of the Enterprise meant the quicker absorp- 
tion, by the five parts Christian civilization, of the twenty- 
five parts Pagan stagnation. It meant the attempted solu- 
tion, by England, of the great problem of Asiatic control 



Il8 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

and the opening of what we call to-day " spheres of influ- 
ence." 

It meant, too, a marvellous growth in that forerunner of 
Christian expansion — the Missionary Society, an influence 
greater than the drumbeat and the flag in the progress of 
the world. 

When the Nineteenth Century began, there were but 
seven missionary societies in existence. By 1825 these 
seven had grown into fifteen, and the gates of heathen 
isolation were already being stormed by Christian crusaders. 

So religion and commerce were going forth, hand in 
hand, to occupy the world. It was often an ill-assorted 
partnership, for the ways of business are not always 
friendly to those of conversion ; but, even when most 
antagonistic, they helped each other until, in 1832, the 
clarion summons of the Englishman Heber in his " Mis- 
sionary Hymn" of 1820 could be answered by the tri- 
umphant notes of the author of " America " as he sang 

" The morning light is breaking, 
The darkness disappears." 

" From Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral 
strand," in the year 1825, the army of Christian occupation 
was already in motion. 

Past Greenland's icy mountains other than Christian 
missionaries were pushing their way. In 1825 the spirit 
of enterprise and the love of adventure were endeavoring 
to solve the secret of the North Pole and find that North- 
west Passage that should give the commerce of Europe 
the " short cut to Cothay " which had been the endeavor 
of discoverers since the days of Columbus and his com- 



WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. 1 19 

panions. The English naval officer, Lieutenant Parry, 
was in that year trying for the third time to force his two 
ships into the western seas at Barrow Strait ; Captain, 
afterwards Sir John Franklin was seeking the open Polar 
Sea by an overland route ; and on the nineteenth of May, 
1825, Captain Beechey, in the Blossom, attempted to force 
the passage by a western route. Nothing conclusive was 
established by their expeditions beyond a study of the 
"lay of the land ; " but in 1829 a combined scientific and 
naval English expedition, under command of Sir John Ross, 
made another attack upon the icy ramparts of the Pole. 
This resulted in little beyond establishing the true position 
of the '' North magnetic pole " as running through the 
Gulf of Bothnia ; a.nd Ross's expedition for three years and 
more was practically lost, imprisoned in Arctic ice. 

Below the Pole, in the great north land, the lines of 
commercial enterprise pushed far into the homes of the 
fur-bearing animals ; and the two great fur trusts, — the 
Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company, — 
bitter and often bloody rivals for the monopoly of the fur 
trade, had, by 1825, united into one company, on equal 
terms, and England thus controlled the valuable fur trade 
of the North. 

Across the still unknown regions of the Northern United 
States, from the Great Lakes to the Pacific, John Jacob 
Astor had merged rival traders into the American Fur 
Company, founded Astoria on the Columbia River as his 
Pacific port, and laid the foundation of the immense Astor 
fortune. In Russian America (now Alaska), and in Siberia 
and Northern Europe, the Russian Fur Company was 
pursuing the same commercial enterprise to warm the 



I20 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

luxurious ones of earth, which had sent into the frozen 
regions of the north adventurers and traders to wrest from 
savao-e Indian and barbarous Siberian the business of strip- 
ping from sea and land animals, from seal and otter, 
beaver, martin, and sable, the skins designed for the use 
of man. 

About that time, too, the trade in buffalo-robes and 
skins became an important American enterprise, and began 
gradually to decimate the enormous roving bands of the 
great ''wild cow" of the western plains. Nineteenth 
Century enterprise was already beginning to burst its 
bonds. 

With the growth of enterprise came also the growth of 
luxury, learning, intelligence, and invention. Music, art, 
and literature became more widely recognized as factors 
or results of progress, and the people gradually opened 
their eyes to the fact that the world was made for them 
and not for the few who claimed dominion over them. 
Even "the man with the hoe" was less brutal, degraded, 
and blind to his own manhood than were his fathers before 
the days of the bloody but glorious Revolution in France. 
Jean Francois Millet, who, later, made his immortal draw- 
ing of this stolid son of the soil, was himself, in 1825, a 
boy of eleven years, working beside his peasant father in 
the dull fields of Barbizon, but beginning to look up from 
the soil, that keeps men beasts, to the sky that makes 
them men. 

In Germany the princes of the big and little kingdoms 
and duchies that really made up the nation were as slow 
in keeping their promises of popular liberty as they had 
been quick to make them when the spectre of Napoleonism 



WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. 121 

set every princeling shivering with anxiety ; but the people 
were reading again, as they had read many a time before, 
the old Bible injunction, "Put not your trust in princes." 
The oftener they read the warning, however, the more 
heed they were beginning to give to it. In 1825 the re- 
actionary or kingly power was still too strongly intrenched 
in Germany and Austria, thanks to the haunting memories 
of the French Revolution and of Napoleon, to admit of 
any real political progress ; but this subserviency could 
not long continue; provincial "diets," or deliberative as- 
semblies, in which the people had a certain representation, 
were granted in Prussia and other German states ; Goethe 
still lived to finish his wonderful poem of progress, 
"Faust," and to show himself, in his old age, the prophet 
of mankind under the new order of things ; while Uhland's 
stirring songs were sinking so deeply into the dissatisfied 
popular heart of his fatherland as to become folk-songs of 
Germany. 

Poet and student, however, were not in accord with the 
rulers of Germany in 1825. They were, indeed, what is 
called in diplomatic language persona noji grata — persons 
not wanted. Uhland and Arndt were deprived of their 
professorships because of their "popular" leanings; the 
brothers Grimm (best known to American boys and girls 
as the authors of that ever famous book of fairy stories 
dear to us all as "Grimm's Tales," but really leaders in 
German scholarship and philology) were " sent packing " 
from the university where they were professors, because of 
their love for German independence and union ; and other 
scholars and thinkers were disgraced for similar reasons, 
while the young men who, as students, dared to think and 



122 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

speak of liberty were suppressed with stern hand. Hum- 
boldt still found the air of Paris more healthful for his 
great scientific labors than his native Germany ; and 
Berzsenyi, Hungary's greatest poet, almost fell a victim, 
for his fervent patriotism, to Austria's hatred of the Hun- 
garian's passion for his fatherland. 

The greatest advance in practical independence and 
popular liberty has not, however, always been made by 
those most rigorously held down by tyranny, but by those 
who, knowing the benefits of freedom, refuse to be domi- 
nated by autocratic methods, or to be deprived of the op- 
portunities for progress. The English-speaking lands are 
those which have soonest achieved independence, and 
most outspokenly combated dropping back beneath the 
yoke. 

In 1825 Great Britain was in the mood for reforming 
abuses ; her people were most determinedly bent upon 
going a step higher in social, political, and domestic free- 
dom. Neither in England nor Scotland were the people 
represented in parliament ; they had no word in the gov- 
ernment of their native land ; they had neither voice, influ- 
ence, nor authority in its councils. A seat in parliament 
was the gift of the " lord of the manor " represented there, 
and the member, in most instances, was the tool or creature 
of the great man \^ho controlled the borough ; seats were 
bought and sold like merchandise ; the ministers of the 
king were the real rulers of England, and did their best to 
oppose and antagonize the free right of Englishmen to 
speak as they felt as to the state of things in England. 

The French Revolution, however, hateful though it was 
to Englishmen, yet had its influence upon them. The 



. WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. 1 23 

French people had asserted themselves ; if need be, the 
English people could do so too. 

When the miserable, graceless, and useless person who 
posed as king of England, " by the grace of God," under 
the title of George the Fourth (whom Thackeray the Eng- 
lishman disposes of by one scathing bit of comparison with 
the great George of America — Washington, and asks, 
" which is the nobler character to admire ? ") — when this 
English George, wrongly called a gentleman, sought to re- 
peat the story of Henry the Eighth, with Henry's ability 
left out, and " put away " his true and lawful wife, the 
ministers of the king attempted to " back up " their good 
for-nothing monarch in his wickedness, and, in 1820, en- 
deavored to force Parliament to pass a bill of " pains and 
penalties " to degrade the queen in the true Henry the 
Eighth style. But they reckoned without their host. For 
the people of England almost rose in revolt. 

" God bless you ! We will bring your husband back to 
you," cried a British working-man to the persecuted queen ; 
and the people of England, without influence, without 
representation, without political rights though they were, 
would have done this had not the death of the unfortunate 
Queen CaroHne, in 1821, prevented the consummation of 
their manly indignation. 

But what they could not do for her, they could do for 
the England which king George and his ministers misrepre- 
sented and misruled. A storm of indignation against king 
and ministers swept the country ; the moral feeling as well 
as the intelligence of Englishmen asserted themselves ; the 
king, even though hedged about with all the false preroga- 
tives of ''royalty," found himself detested; the ministers 



124 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

were held responsible for the popular discontent and rest- 
lessness, and the people demanded a reform of parliamen- 
tary methods. But when a fortunate death in the cabinet 
raised the statesman Canning to power, a new day dawned 
for England. As Mr. Gardiner, the English historian, 
declares, " the failure of the ministers to carry the Bill of 
Pains and Penalties was a turning-point in the history of 
the country." 

Canning asserted the right of England to free action, in 
spite of the " Holy Alliance." He believed in the greater 
right of the English people to govern themselves. He 
protested, in behalf of England, against the use of force 
against the patriots of Spain and Italy. He recognized 
the new repubhcs of revolted South America. He spoke 
for the freedom of Greece. He voiced the English people's 
defiance of despotism, headed the party of progress, and 
was joyfully accepted and hailed as "the champion and 
spokesman of national and popular liberty." 

He died in 1827, a martyr to his own exertions in behalf 
of right and progress ; but his work lived after him. Be- 
cause of his policy and his eloquent appeals, the barriers 
of English aristocracy weakened. The people demanded 
the redress of wrongs that held them down ; commercial 
and religious selfishness were replaced by a more generous 
spirit in church and trade ; Roman Catholics and Protes- 
tant " dissenters," so long excluded from office and oppor- 
tunity, were allowed a voice and vote ; the death penalty 
for minor crimes and slight offences was removed ; the 
iniquitous laws respecting the importation of corn were 
modified ; concessions to the people were demanded and 
granted, and when, in 1830, George the Fourth closed 



WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. 12$ 

his good-for-nothing life, the people found that even royal 
protests could not stand against the popular will, and that 
the " last of the Georges " had been a reformer in spite of 
himself. 

Wellington, victor of Waterloo, was then prime minister 
of England. In spite, too, of his military style of ordering 
things, in the face of his dislike and scorn of the popular 
will, the "Iron Duke" was forced to yield to the majority 
of his countrymen, and second the demands of Englishmen 
that military despotism and royal tyranny should be curbed. 

Out of this recognition of the voice of the real England 
came the union against the Turkish butchers in Greece. 
Wellington cared little for the Greek patriots, but he did 
wish to "head off" Russia. So, in 1826, he proposed to 
the new Czar Nicholas, that Russia and England should 
jointly "interfere" in behalf of Greece. The next year 
France joined the alliance ; and on the 20th of October, 
1827, the combined fleets of England, France, and Russia, 
under command of an English admiral, annihilated the 
fleets of Turkey and Egypt at the battle of Navarino, com- 
pelled the retreat of Ibrahim Pasha and his soldiers from 
their campaign of devastation, and virtually brought about 
the independence of Greece. For after a brief war be- 
tween Russia and Turkey, when Russian troops invaded 
Turkey, both in Europe and Asia, and brought about the 
peace of Adrianople in 1829, Turkey gave up the fight; 
and, in 1830 the Conference of London officially declared 
the independence of Greece. 

In that very year of 1 830, however, the Duke of Welling- 
ton announced himself as opposed to parliamentary reform ; 
believing in force rather than in concession, he would have 



126 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

put down the popular demand by the bayonet ; he declared 
that it was simply an agitation for change by fanatics and 
disorderly persons ; and he resisted all reform so stoutly, 
that he became unpopular, and in November, 1830, was 
forced to resign as Prime Minister of England. 

In that very year of 1830, too, George Stephenson in- 
augurated what may be considered as really the modern 
era of railways by opening the Liverpool and Manchester 
Railway — the first "long line" — and driving his newly- 
invented locomotive the " Rocket " up to a surprising 
speed of twenty-nine miles an hour. 

"But suppose a cow should get on the track.-' " queried 
one of the noble lords before whom the indomitable North 
Country farmer's son was explaining his invention. 

" It would be vera bad for the coo, me lord," replied 
Stephenson quietly. 

Others than the old fogies who stood in the way of in- 
ventive genius learned the same lesson. The Duke of 
Wellington, seeking to oppose the popular will, tried to 
stand on the track in front of the spirit of progress in 
1830, and found out that, as Stephenson declared, such a 
position was, "vera bad for the coo." 1830 was really the 
birthday of reform. 

Between 1825 and 1830 reform was in the air not only 
in matters political, but in almost all branches of human 
thought. The mind of man- was gradually being freed 
from the chains of centuries of blind belief, and was reach- 
ing out for "exactness" in all the sciences — from law 
and life to religion, medicine, and manners. 

While Stephenson, the farmer collier's son, was develop- 
ing the locomotive and revolutionizing the means of trans- 



WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. 1.2/ 

portation, Pestalozzi, the Swiss school-teacher, an old, old 
man of eighty, was fighting his last fight for his especial re- 
form in education, which was really to be the education of 
the people. 

"I have no time to bother with the alphabet," Napoleon 
had told him, when he sought to interest that great but 
short-sighted emperor in his practical theories. But in 
1825, a German soldier who had fought against Napoleon, 
Frederick Froebel, " a pupil of Pestalozzi, and a genius like 
his master," was starving himself to found the educational 
system, developed from Pestalozzi's idea, which has practi- 
cally made over all the first principles of education. In 
America, Horace Mann, a young lawyer of Massachusetts, 
was fighting the battle of religious liberty against sectarian 
appropriations for educational purposes, and was gradually 
forming the plan which made him, ten years later, the 
" Father of the American Common School system." 

Those five years, too, showed a marked advance in medi- 
cine and surgery. Pathology, or the doctrine of disease, 
was progressing along new lines. The Frenchmen Brous- 
sais and Laennec, Louis and Bayle were developing new 
methods in medical research ; Richard Bright the English- 
man, and Abercrombie the Scotchman, were linking their 
names to important medical discoveries, while Romberg 
the German was revolutionizing the study of nervous dis- 
eases, and Hahnemann the Saxon was living a martyr to 
his own convictions that a small doze of physic can cure as 
thoroughly as a big one, and his other theory that the same 
thing that will make a well man sick may make a sick man 
well — homeopathy. 

The old order was surely passing. On the same re- 



128 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

markable day — the fourth of July, 1826 — the fiftieth 
anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence 
— died the two men most responsible for that immortal docu- 
ment, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, and John Adams of 
Massachusetts. The principle of independence for which 
they stood and which they had established had led to the 
new American idea of performance, and their experiment 
in self-government had blossomed into the " overruling 
sentiment of a common nationality." 

In the Congress of the United States the spokesman 
and champion of the "American idea " was Daniel Web- 
ster. "Those are daily dropping from among us," he said, 
"who established our liberty and our government. The 
great trust now descends to new hands. . . . The spirit of 
the times strongly invites us. Our proper business is im- 
provement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In 
a day of peace let us advance the arts of peace and the 
works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, 
call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all 
its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day 
and generation, may not perform something worthy to be 
remembered." 

Webster's suggestion was a grand one, and it was in 
time brought about. But even in a free land progress is 
slow ; and the thirteen colonies, now nearly doubled in 
number as sovereign and growing States, were developing 
the rivalries .and selfishnesses which seem to be accompani- 
ments to freedom. Liberty is ever jealous of its rights ; 
and a republic has always been threatened by partisanship 
and faction, from the days of the Roman to those of the 
Boer; and, between 1825 and 1830, this check on a too- 



WHEN THE WORLD GREW IN MANLINESS. 1 29 

confident freedom was putting true freedom to a bitter 
test. In Greece, newly freed from centuries of Moslem 
mastery, feud and faction were already at work ; in the 
republics of South America, jealousy and suspicion were 
undermining true patriotism ; and in the better-established 
United States the " Era of Good Feeling " was giving way 
to the era of misgiving 

In 1826 Bolivar, the liberator, proposed the first "Pan- 
American Congress" — a convention of all the American 
republics for a unity of action and interest. It met at 
Panama on the twenty-second of June, 1826; but the 
United States was not represented, much as President 
John Quincy Adams, that far-seeing statesman, desired it. 
He saw in the Congress an opportunity to extend the in- 
fluence of the United States over all America, and cement 
the Monroe Doctrine. But certain members of the Con- 
gress of the United States disliked the idea of sitting at 
tables with the representatives of the black republic of 
Hayti ; opposition and delay hampered decisive action ; 
the great republic lost its golden opportunity, and caste 
and foolish fear made the Pan-American Congress of 1826 
a dismal failure. 

The republics of Colombia, Central America, Peru, and 
Mexico, in this Congress of Panama, did "mutually agree 
and confederate themselves in peace and war in a perpetual 
contract to maintain the sovereignty and independence of 
the confederated powers against foreign interference, and 
to secure the enjoyment of unalterable peace" — and then 
they began to be jealous of one another ! Bolivar the lib- 
erator was accused of ambitious designs in 1829, and forced 
into exile and death ; San Martin, the patriot of the south, 



I30 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

was allowed to die in France in poverty and neglect ; and 
John Quincy Adams, the best American of his day, was 
defeated at the polls and retired before the " rising star " 
of American democracy — Andrew Jackson, the hero of 
New Orleans. The trail of the sword still showed itself 
across the path of progress, and the "ingratitude of repub- 
lics " was once again forcibly displayed. 

But this apparent " ingratitude," as the enemies of 
equality liked to call it, was simply a balance-wheel to 
what should, perhaps, be called an over-confident indepen- 
dence. The jealousies of South America, the factions in 
Greece, the rivalries in the United States, were all neces- 
sary to a real progress. Contentment is not always a vir- 
tue ; and the "victories " of the opposition were really, as 
Dr. Edward Channing says, " a triumph of the new forces 
of unrest in political and social life which, sooner or later, 
was certain to come." 

In 1830 the shadow of Napoleon's despotism was gradu- 
ally passing from the world. Europe, smarting under the 
selfish despotism of reactionary kings and princes, was 
again in unrest, and a new " shaking up " and readjustment 
seemed imminent, alike in Europe and America. But 
Africa still lay in darkness, while Asia was openly threat- 
ened by the domination of Europe. The first quarter of 
the Nineteenth Century, which had closed in peace, gave 
way to the second quarter — the courier of a growing- 
democracy ; and the rider who galloped into the arena as 
the herald of the common people was " one of the most re- 
markable men America has produced " — Andrew Jackson 
of Tennessee. 



" A typical man of the people, 
Andrew Jackson proved kintself i 
born leader of men in time of stress, 
and one admirably fitted to ride the 
storm, and direct the forces of the new 
democracy." 

Edward Chanjiinff, 



THE AGE OF JACKSON. 
DEMOCRACY. 

{18^0-1840.) 



ANDREW JACKSON, 

CHAMPION OF DEMOCRACY, 

Born Waxhaw Settlement, South Carolina, March is, 1767, 

Died Hermitage, Tennessee, June 8, 1843. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HOW THE WORLD HAD A NEW SHAKING UP. 
{From i8jo to i8jj) 

THREE decades of the Nineteenth Century — 1810, 
1820, 1830 — had passed. To the age of Napoleon, 
the imperialist, had succeeded the age of Wellington, the 
soldier, and, to" that, the age of Bolivar, the liberator. 

With 1830 a new age dawned upon mankind, — the age 
of Jackson, the .democrat. 

The world was ripe for this new departure in ideas, faith, 
and government. The people had learned their strength, 
and were preparing to take a hand in " running things." 
Reform in England, independence in South America, ex- 
pansion in Asia, the divine right of the people in the 
United States — all these were profoundly affecting Europe, 
and once again startling and unsettling the " God-given " 
royal rulers of the earth. 

Even in literature, or rather in poetry, — the real mirror 
of the age, — was this condition apparent. In 1830 Be- 
ranger was making songs for all France to sing, and declar- 
ing that " My soul has always vibrated with that of the 
people ; " while young Victor Hugo, triumphing with his 
masterpiece of " Hernani," was putting into his verses and 
his plays the essence of his dream of real liberty and great- 
ness for France. Manzoni the Italian was preaching to his 
countrymen that only as patriotism is linked with virtue 

133 



134 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

can it insure true freedom ; and Ferdinand Freiligrath, a boy 
in an Amsterdam bank, was developing that love for a free 
Germany that soon found expression in such home-loving 
songs as his " Emigrants," and, later, made him a man of 
action and a patriot. Heine, the German poet-satirist, was 
poking fun at the out-of-date "nobility" of France, and sharp- 
ening the biting weapons of his wit and song, that were to 
make him in after years, though weak and worn, the stoutest 
champion for "liberty of conscience, action, and opinion." 

" If all Europe were to become a prison," said Heine, 
"America would still present a loop-hole of escape ; and God 
be praised ! that loop-hole is larger than the dungeon itself." 

The " loop-hole " was certainly in those days showing 
the world how large its proportions and possibilities were. 
Although the area of the United States was the same in 
1840 that it was in 1830, the population had been swelled 
by five millions in those ten years, the twelve million in- 
habitants of 1830 becoming the seventeen million of 1840. 
A large proportion of so much of that increase as came from 
beyond the bovmdaries of the republic was found in the 
home-building, home-loving Germans, whom Freiligrath in 
his verses "the Emigrants " begged to remain in Germany ; 
and all of the immigrants to America were attracted by 
that spirit of democracy for which the great republic and 
its democratic president then stood — the spirit embodied, 
in those warning verses of Manzoni, the Italian singer of 
liberty and democracy. 

" We are all made in one likeness holy, 
Ransomed all by one only redemption, 
Near or far, rich or poor, high or lowly, 
Wherever we breathe in life's air; 



HOW THE WORLD HAD A NEW SHAKING UP. 1 35 

We are brothers by one great pre-emption, 
Bound all ; and accursed be its wronger, 
Who would ruin by right of the stronger, 
Wring the hearts of the weak by despair." 

The " right of the stronger " was to be severely tested 
in that year of 1830; and just who was the stronger was 
to be asked in more lands than one. 

France made the query and opened the ball. Charles 
the Tenth, an old and empty-headed Bourbon, was king of 
France. The priests, rather than the people, ruled his 
actions ; and when the newspapers sought to speak the 
popular disapproval openly, the liberty of the press was 
abridged. Then the National Guard — the citizen soldiers 
of France — openly hissed the king who distrusted the 
people ; and the people themselves, enraged at the disband- 
ment of the National Guard, demanded reforms. The king 
and his ministers dissolved the Chamber of Deputies — the 
representatives of the people — and at once the people 
elected a new Chamber. 

Thereupon King Charles and his ministers suspended 
the liberty of the press, and dissolved the new Chamber ; 
thus, as Mr. Mackenzie declares, " putting their hands to 
awful documents which sealed the ruin of a line of sixty 
kings." 

The people were roused to fury ; all Paris was in revolt, 
while all France cried out in indignation. The throne of 
France was threatened ; a new French Revolution seemed 
imminent ; blood flowed in the streets of Paris ; the old 
patriot Lafayette was summoned from his farm at La- 
grange to take command of the National Guard — the 
Forces of France, as it was called ; and when the old king. 



136 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

fearing for his crown and even for his head, offered to give 
in, Lafayette returned the answer : " It is too late. 'We 
have revoked the ordinances ourselves. Charles X. has 
ceased to reign." 

So the last Bourbon king of France was driven into 
exile. The people had won without the blood of another 
Terror ; for they had learned, by harsh experience, both 
wisdom and restraint. 

They would have placed Lafayette on the empty throne, 
but the old hero had no wish for such preferment. In- 
stead, by a dramatic touch, he presented to the swarming 
people before the City Hall of Paris, the republican prince, 
Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans. 

" Hurrah for the Constitution ! Long live the Duke of 
Orleans ! " shouted the people ; and the Chamber of Depu- 
ties who, with Lafayette, had already chosen the duke as 
their candidate for the vacant throne, strengthened by this 
voice of the people, proclaimed Louis Philippe " King of the 
French." Lafayette, "who for fifty years had conspired 
to overturn thrones," thus placed upon the throne the 
"citizen-king," in whose hands he believed the liberties of 
the people were safe ; and France, while not the republic 
men desired, became at last a constitutional monarchy, with 
not a Bourbon, but an Orleans king ; at least, it was a long 
step in advance. 

" It is a plank to cross over the gutter," said Beranger, 
the people's poet. "It is a preparation for the republic." 

Emboldened by the success of the " Revolution of July " 
in France, other European states sought the same redress 
of grievances. Belgium rose in revolt against its enforced 
union with Holland ; Poland broke out against Russia, and 



. HOW THE WORLD HAD A NEW SHAKING UP. 1 37 

set up a provisional government ; Saxony and Hesse-Cassel 
rose in revolt, and demanded a new constitution ; Brunswick 
expelled its ruler, the duke ; Frankfort broke away from 
control ; the Swiss cantons demanded a more democratic 
"accommodation ; " Berlin and Hamburg caught the fever, 
and threatened revolution ; Northern Italy broke into re- 
volt ; Spain attempted civil war ; Great Britain was swept 
with riots because the House of Lords defeated a new 
"reform -bill," and "the people," throughout Europe, made 
themselves especially obnoxious to those who claimed to be 
their masters. 

The kings of the Holy Alliance met in conference ; the 
"risings" of the people were firmly put down. But the 
spirit of democracy could only be temporarily smothered ; 
and even though Russia did suppress the Polish insurrec- 
tion, and reduce that sorely-beset state to a mere province 
of the empire, the effect of this new popular protest was to 
grant additional rights in most cases, and to convince the 
kings of the earth that they really did not own it. The 
"Revolution of July" put an end to the unholy "Holy 
Alliance," and Europe made another step towards consti- 
tutional liberty. 

In 1830 the "Powers " of Europe acknowledged the in- 
dependence of Belgium. In 1831 France abolished the 
hereditary peerage ; in 1832 the parliament of Great Brit- 
ain passed the Reform Bill, removing inequalities in repre- 
sentation, giving a voice to towns and districts previously 
without representation, enfranchising vassal tenants, and 
announcing the rights of freemen ; that same year seven 
cantons of Switzerland guaranteed the new free constitu- 
tion, and the next year (1833) saw the assembling of the 



138 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

First Reform Parliament of Great Britain, while in 1834 
came the first parliamentary grant for the education of the 
people. In 1833 Guizot, the great French statesman, 
founded, also, a popular education system, and Prussia 
organized a " commercial league " in which every German 
state, large or small, had vote and voice, and the present 
business prosperity of the German people was begun. 
Thus Europe felt the touch of progress, and by 1835 
was seeing the real benefits of a broader liberty. Only 
Russia, steeped in despotism, permitted neither educational, 
intellectual, religious, nor political reform. 

Independence in thought and life and action is the very 
breath of progress. Freedom of effort stimulates the in- 
ventive and creative faculties, and a unity of interests 
means an advance in humanity. 

So the years between 1830 and 1835 saw many improve- 
ments in the world of thought, endeavor, and achievement. 
Steam was entering more largely into the fields of labor 
and communication. Even before 1830 the demands of 
transportation in the growing states of the American Union 
interested wide-awake investors in the possible value of the 
locomotive engine, invented in England, and improved to a 
practical value by Stephenson. After Stephenson's suc- 
cess with the " Rocket " in 1829, three English locomotives 
were brought over to America, and the first trial was made 
at Honesdale in Pennsylvania. In 1826 a horse-railroad 
drew loaded cars to and from the granite quarries at 
Ouincy in Massachusetts; in 1828 the South Carolina 
railroad was begun ; and on the fourth of July, 1828, 
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of 
Independence, drove the first spike of the Baltimore and 



HOW THE WORLD HAD A NEW SHAKING UP- 1 39 

Ohio Railroad, destined to be one of the great "iron 
trails " of the continent. It was for use on this road that 
Stephenson's locomotive engines were imported ; and, by 
1832, the road was seventy-three miles long, and running 
at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. 

Although the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester 
Railway in England, in 1829, led to this wonderful revolu- 
tion in the modes of travelling, both in England and 
America the first steps were but slowly made. In 1835 
there was, according to Dr. Wallace, " not a mile of rail- 
road in England, except the short Stockton and Darlington, 
and the Liverpool and Manchester lines ; none between 
London and the great northern and western cities was 
even seriously contemplated." In that same year the forty 
miles of American railroad finished in 1830 had grown to 
only a thousand miles. In other lands the first growth was 
even slower. France, in 1833, was considering a general 
plan of railway development, though but a few miles were 
in operation ; active work on Belgian railroads was begun 
the same year, and the first German line was opened in 
1835. But Austria positively discouraged such new inno- 
vations as steam railways, and the progress-hating czar of 
Russia actually forbade them. Spain and Holland, Portu- 
gal, Italy, and Turkey took little or no interest in this new 
method of travelling ; not for years were the iron rails laid 
upon the soil of these countries or in the lands of South 
America and the European colonies in Asia and Africa. It 
was Anglo-Saxon enterprise that set on foot and developed 
this new method of speed and comfort in travelling and 
transportation ; and even in England and America its 
growth was slow until it had actually proved its efficiency. 



I40 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Fast upon the heels of the railroad and the steamboat — 
the time-savers for man — came a demand for labor-savers ; 
and inventors in all lands had already drawn on their 
" thinking-caps." The ideas that underlie many of our 
modern inventions, were known and had even been crudely 
worked out in the eighteenth century ; but the nineteenth 
undertook their practical development ; and, in this devel- 
opment, the growing acquaintance with the power and 
possibilities of steam played a leading part. 

As the properties and value of coal as a heat -giver be- 
came more widely recognized, the union of heat and steam 
was put to practical uses ; and the steam-engine, an inven- 
tion of the second century before Christ, became, in the 
nineteenth century after Christ, a real and necessary helper 
to man. From James Watt's invention of the steam-engine, 
in 1763, grew all its modern methods and mechanisms, 
and by 1835 its value was patent to all. The steam-engine 
began to take the place of the water-wheel and the wind- 
mill ; the steam-plough was invented in 1832; improved 
methods in the manufacture of goods from cotton, wool, 
and leather came into use ; and the patent-offices of civilized 
nations were kept busy in recording and protecting the 
inventions of active brains and hands. 

In America, especially, did inventive ingenuity find a 
wide and fruitful field. The iron industry, already growing 
to large proportions, the introduction of anthracite coal for 
the production and smelting of iron, the uses of coal, also, 
for heating dwellings and for the preparation of illumi- 
nating-gas, led to the necessity for new contrivances in 
connection with, or growing out of, these great industries ; 
and 1830 was really our "pivotal " year in brain-production, 



HOW THE WORLD HAD A NEW SHAKING UP. I41 

Invention is the sworn foe to exclusiveness, and ma- 
chinery is the leveller of caste. In a republic like the 
United States, this development of new economic forces 
led to the growth of democratic ideas. The year 1830, also, 
marks the downfall of the old colonial period of isolation ; 
for, when people were brought together through the new 
methods of communication and manufacture, they were led 
to demand more and better things, to become more inter- 
ested in one another, and, by the new element of competi- 
tion in trade and production, to become sharper rivals but, 
at the same time, closer associates, standing on a broader 
basis of equality, endeavor, and life. 

In the year 1832 there sailed on the ocean packet Sully, 
from Havre to New York, an American portrait-painter, 
artist, and professor of the art of design in the University 
of New York — Samuel Finley Breese Morse. He was a 
successful artist, and was the president of the National 
Academy of Design ; but, for years, something more than 
subjects for pictures and portraits had been buzzing in his 
busy brain. He was greatly interested in the possibilities 
of electricity — that wonderful power in nature, whose force 
had been largely introduced to the scientific world by 
Morse's fellow-countryman, Benjamin Franklin — like 
Morse, a Boston boy. Professor Morse believed in the 
possibility of communication by use of the electric current ; 
and in his cabin on the Sully he was working out a process 
that was in his head, and which he believed could be made 
practical. 

In mid-ocean, one October day in 1832, he completed 
his calculations, and made drawings of an instrument with 
which, so he declared to his friends on board the Sully, he 



142 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

could compel a current of electricity to pass instantaneously 
along a far-reaching wire, stretched to any distance, and to 
record the signs the despatcher wished to convey. 

Sceptical people said it was impossible ; superstitious 
people called it witchcraft ; and practical people thought it 
only another kind of electrical toy. For electricity was 
not a new discovery ; it had been experimented with from 
the far-off days of Thales of Miletus, six hundred years 
before Christ ; but, like its sister power of steam, it had 
waited all these ages for the nineteenth century after 
Christ, for practical and triumphant development. As to 
the electric telegraph, — an instrument to write at a dis- 
tance, — other men before Morse had also conceived the 
idea ; but no one had really brought it to a practical result 
until Professor Morse made his drawings and calculations 
on board the packet-ship Sully, although at the same time 
the Alsatian inventor, Steinhal, was also studying out, and 
had nearly perfected, a working model of a recording tele- 
graph. Professor Morse, the American, was, however, 
first in the field ; and to him is given the credit of being 
the father of modern telegraphy. 

" If the presence of electricity can be made visible in 
any part of the circuit," he said to his fellow passengers 
in the cabin of the Sully, " I see no reason why intelli- 
gence may not be transmitted by electricity." 

Reaching New York, he set about making his apparatus ; 
in 1835 ^^ discovered a way to strengthen or "re-enforce" 
the electric current, and in 1836 he had completed a 
working apparatus. After that, through years of disap- 
pointment, poverty, and persistence, he kept on with his 
invention, which finally brought him recognition, success, 



HOW THE WORLD HAD A NEW SHAKING UP. 143 

and fame ; but it was in this period — the years between 
1830 and 1835 — that his idea attained faith and form in 
his mind, and to that period, therefore can be assigned the 
practical discovery and invention of the wonderful and 
world-develop ing electric telegraph. 

Invention is, perhaps, an even greater civilizer than 
philanthropy ; but philanthropy, as they say in a race, is a 
"quick second." And philanthropy, in the days that gave 
birth to the telegraph, was also doing practical work in the 
world, which because of it, as because, too, of inven- 
tion, was becoming more self-reliant, self-helpful, and 
democratic. 

The success of the Reform Bill in England, which practi- 
cally enfranchised the people of England, was followed in 
1833 by the Act of Parliament abolishing slavery in all the 
British colonies on and after the first day of August, 1834. 

It was a great step forward. But the colonies did not, 
as a rule, thank the mother country for the gift of free- 
dom to man. The Boers of the Cape Colony in Africa, 
the planters of the West Indies, and the bushrangers and 
farmers of Australia strongly objected to the new order of 
things, even though England granted to the slave-owners 
a hundred millions of dollars as indemnity for their loss. 
But the moral effect on the world was incalculable. 
Cowper's lines fell again and with new emphasis on English 
ears : 

" Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if their lungs 
Receive our air, that moment they are free ; 
They touch^our country and their shackles fall." 

And Whittier, destined to be America's poet of freedom, 
demanded, in indignant inquiry, of his own countryman : 



144 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

" Shall every flap of England's flag 

Proclaim that all around are free 
From 'farthest Ind' to each blue crag 

That beetles o'er the western sea? 
And shall we scoff at Europe's kings 

When Freedom's fire is dim with us 
And round our country's altar clings 

The dawning shade of Slaveiy's curse ? " 

But the day was not yet ripe in America for the great 
stride England had taken. The United States had abol- 
ished the slave-trade — or rather the importation of slaves 
— in 1808 ; but slavery was esteemed too great a necessity 
in the tobacco and cotton-growing States of the South for 
people to agree to the suggestion of Washington and 
follow the example of Jefferson — both slaveholders who 
freed their own slaves. Indeed, by 1835, the maintenance 
of slavery was the vital question in the South ; and the 
cotton-gin of Eli Whitney was largely responsible for it. 

Gradually the Northern States had all abolished the 
evil ; the new States of the Northwest made freedom their 
corner-stone ; and the existence of slavery beneath the flag 
of the United States — the ** banner of the free " — slowly 
developed into a matter of conviction, North and South ■ — 
deep-seated and strong in its favor in the South ; indifferent 
at first, but gradually growing into pronounced opposition, 
in the North. 

Stronger than partisanship and philanthropy in the 
United States, however, in those opening years of the 
slavery dispute, was the desire for union, prosperity, and 
peace. Men grow up to great ideas gradually. Indepen- 
dence, which had been secured at great cost by the United 
States of America, was esteemed too great a boon to be 



HOW THE WORLD HAD A NEW SHAKING UP. 1 45 

shared with men of servile race and African blood. To 
the makers of the Republic a man was a white man ; it 
took years of slowly developing thought, and the strain and 
fret of discussion, debate, and quarrel, before the larger 
truth sank into the American mind, that, as Burns put it, 
"A man's a man for a' that." 

So, as slavery strengthened, and opposition displayed 
itself, the statesmen of America held themselves to the 
task of smoothing over sectional differences by " compro- 
mising " matters. In 1820 it had been agreed that sla- 
very should be prohibited in the United States west of the 
Mississippi River, and north of the southern border of Mis- 
souri ; this was called the Missouri Compromise. This 
had been brought about by one of the foremost Americans 
of the time — Henry Clay of Kentucky ; and both he and 
Daniel Webster of Massachusetts stand out as the cham- 
pions of union and peace, at a time when both peace and 
union were necessary to the consistent development of the 
growing republic. There is a time for all things in the 
lives of men and nations, and the day for universal freedom 
had not yet arrived in America. That truth is born of 
discussion. Discussion, though slow in results, stirs the 
minds of men. A mind thus stirred to think is open to 
many new ideas; and these ideas, promulgated often by 
unbalanced and impractical persons, not unfrequently take 
foolish, fanatical, or furious courses. Out of these, or in 
spite of these, real and practical progress finally comes; 
but the process is slow, exasperating, and often unsettling. 
In the years between 1830 and 1835 many of these re- 
forms took shape, and often very unattractive shapes ; 
for that period was the birthday of isms in America more 



146 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

than in the rest of the world, because only in America was 
thought really democratic and free. Fourierism, Millerism, 
Mormonism, Mesmerism, Abolitionism, and all the antis 
and isms from anti-masonry and the Perfectionists to 
Abolitionism and Teetotalism, had their beginnings in 
America around 1835 ; and like the virgins in the Bible 
parable, some of them were wise and some were foolish. 
But they were all efforts toward liberty. 




TYPES OF THE ) Balzac 

Humboldt 
AGE OF JACKSON \ Heine 



Horace Mann 

Jackson 

Father Matthew 



CHAPTER IX. 

WHAT "OLD HICKORY " HELPED TO ACCOMPLISH. 
{From j8jj to 1840.) 

VERY many of these "fads" of 1835 of which men- 
tion has been made, though of American growth, 
were of "European extraction," Hke so many American 
citizens. Europe was fighting its own battle for human 
rights, and out of this struggle for freedom queer growths 
sprang. Frowned upon or forbidden in Europe, they 
crossed the sea to America, and there found friends and 
foes, but flourished largely unrestrained. 

The curse of drink was threatening the health and 
morals of civilization. From the beginning of the century 
good men in Europe and America had studied how to stay 
the evil of intemperance. Example and declaration were 
esteemed the only real way; and in September, 1832, 
Joseph Livesey, of Preston, in England, with six compan- 
ions, signed a pledge, binding themselves to totally ab- 
stain from the use of alcohol in every form. It was the 
first Total Abstinence Society. Temperance organizations 
there had been before, — the American Temperance So- 
ciety of 1826, and its EngHsh namesake of 1830 ; but not 
until Livesey's pledge-taking was there a move to cure the 
drink habit by absolute abstinence. Every " teetotaler " 
became a missionary for his cause, and both in England 
and America the crusade against intemperance grew. 

147 



148 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Parliament voted an " inquiry " into the prevalence of 
drunkenness in 1835. Father Mathew, an Irish priest, 
signed the pledge in 1836, and at once began so vigorous 
a crusade that "nearly half of Ireland," thousands in Eng- 
land, and a great following in America, convinced by his 
eloquence, enrolled themselves under his banner of reform. 

The temperance " crusade " did not cross the channel to 
the Continent. The " strenuousness of exertion" which 
displayed itself in the reforms of Great Britain and Amer- 
ica was of slower growth in other than English-speaking 
nations ; and as drunkenness was less prevalent on the Con- 
tinent, so reform seemed less necessary. "Temperance 
legislation " did not make its appearance in European law- 
making bodies for several years to come. 

But 1835, which marked the birth of revision in methods, 
which swung the pendulum of reform from ism to ism, 
until it settled to a practical plumb, and which saw the 
development of democratic ideas whenever men began to 
think without the fear of constraint or force, saw also this 
broadening of thought along still nobler lines of effort, — 
lines which led, in our time, straight to that grandeur of 
achievement which has made these hundred years to be 
well styled "the Wonderful Century." 

In all departments of productive science the minds of 
men were sharply active in the formative thirties. Priest- 
ley and Lavoisier, Scheele and Herschel, Laplace and 
Cuvier, pioneers in science when the century began, had 
all passed away. New men, working on the foundations 
these forerunners of the new sciences had laid, were 
actively progressing, in 1835, along the new lines of effort 
thus prepared for them. 



WHAT "OLD HICKORY" HELPED TO ACCOMPLISH. 149 

In looking up and looking cIoAvn — in astronomy and 
geology — Bessel the German, and Lyell the Englishman, 
were studying and discovering new methods. In the ways 
of looking out on things — in botany and ornithology, 
zoology and the mechanical sciences, Schleiden the German, 
and Hooker the English botanists, Saint Hilaire the 
French ornithologist and zoologist, the Stephensons, father 
and son, English giants of the steam-engine, and Faraday, 
the foremost investigator of his da}^, were leading the 
advance in developments, while in the ways of looking 
in — physiology and psychology — Schwann the German 
physiologist, Baer the Russian naturalist, were active in 
research ; and James Mill the English philosopher, dying 
in 1836, bequeathed to his illustrious son, John Stuart 
Mill, those principles in mind-studies that have made both 
son and father great. Looking around — the science of geo- 
graphy — found its best examplers at that time in Bowditch 
the American, Sir John Barrow, founder of the Royal 
Geograpical Society, and the German Humboldt, greatest 
of modern geographers. In history, ethnology, and philol- 
ogy — the sciences that look back — Guizot the French- 
man, Bopp the German, Bancroft the American, and Hal- 
lam the Englishman, were leading the advance of a study 
as old as Herodotus and Tacitus, but as new as Macaulay, 
and Max Miiller, and Green, their successors of a still 
later day. In religion, philosophy, and ethics — the hope- 
ful sciences, the sciences of faith and reason, and of look- 
ing forward — the year 1835 was prolific of thinkers, 
reasoners, and teachers, who, in the mid-years of the 
century, were to be the prophets and leaders of new 
schools of theology and thought. For, in 1835, Spencer 



150 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

and Darwin, Emerson and Martineau, were, in youthful 
enthusiasm, pushing forward the work begun by Fichte 
and Comte, and other leaders of thought. In 1835, too, 
Thomas Carlyle had published his "Sartor Resatus;" he 
was on the eve of making public his story of the French 
Revolution ; and the glory of the Victorian Era was 
already in the flush of dawning. 

The woman whose womanliness dominated Europe for 
two-thirds of a century, and gave her name to one of the 
world's brightest stages of intellectual advance, ascended 
the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and 
Ireland as Queen Victoria in 1837. In that year the 
Victorian Era began. 

But not alone in the literature and effort of England was 
the opening of that era notable. In lands that, because of 
political and racial differences, would have scorned the use 
of the name of Victoria, queen of England, the year of 
her accession marked important advances in literature, art, 
and science, in attempting and achieving, in designing and 
doing. But in England that year was especially promi- 
nent. In that year Carlyle's "French Revolution" and 
the " Pickwick Papers " of Charles Dickens, were pub- 
lished ; Tennyson wrote " Locksley Hall " and " Morte 
d' Arthur." In all of these lived that spirit of democracy 
that was already, because of the efforts of the year 1830, 
awakening the world of Europe to broader endeavor. In 
1838 this spirit of progress displayed itself in England in 
the demands made by an active party of political reformers, 
who, because they asked for the "people's charter," were 
called Chartists. Universal suffrage, annual parliaments, 
equal representation, vote by ballot, and an abolition of 



WHAT "OLD HICKORY" HELPED TO ACCOMPLISH. 151 

property qualifications for members of parliament, were the 
leading principles of this new party, all of which were 
acknowledged as the inherent and proclaimed rights of the 
democracy that ruled America. This English demand 
came because of the people's advance ; it came because of 
the Reform Bill of 1832 ; and had it but sought to establish 
itself as law by peaceable methods, it might have succeeded 
long before it did ; for, to-day, in Great Britain all or very 
nearly all the things the Chartists demanded are embodied 
in English law. But, as in all reforms, fanatics and dis- 
turbers, agitators and rioters, in the opening years of 
Chartism, hindered more than helped the new scheme of 
reform ; and antagonisms grew into open ruptures, which 
for a time, even as with the abohtionists of America, 
proved a real detriment, even though they became at last 
an advantage to the great cause in whose behalf these 
temporary disturbances were invoked. 

Meantime, across the water, the leader of the new forces 
of democracy — that "typical man of the people," Andrew 
Jackson — was making his mark upon the world. Impul- 
sive, hot-headed, obstinate, this man of the people was, 
nevertheless a student of the people, and fathomed alike 
their desires and their needs. Above all, an ardent lover 
of the Union, he believed absolutely in the sovereignty of 
the people, and his eight years' service as president of the 
United States has been termed a " period of constitutional 
despotism." But Andrew Jackson read the Constitution 
of the United States to suit his own judgments; and 
although the Constitution really contained checks upon the 
will of the people, he made even those checks serve his own 
purpose as a leader of the people. He thus opened the 



152 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

way to a new speech in American history, and, in a broader 
sense, the history of the civiHzed world, by proclaiming a 
democracy that was dangerously near despotism, but which 
in time so survived all shocks and crises as to lead the 
nation, — and, in a still wider sense, the whole world, — out 
of old-time notions into nationalism, industrial freedom, and 
a new and more beneficial economic development. 

Andrew Jackson's methods were often open to question ; 
they were indeed often detestable ; but his theories were 
correct, and the results contributed beyond even what 
" Old Hickory" himself, as he was called, could imagine, to 
the growth of democratic ideas at home and abroad. 

In his own land, by his prompt and vigorous measures, 
Andrew Jackson worked his will — which he always pro- 
tested was the will of the people — to the glory and great- 
ness of the United States of America. With a stern and 
heavy hand he crushed down state sovereignty, and declared 
the sovereignty of the nation ; he demolished the institution 
known as the United States Bank, which he decided to be 
an "Un-American Monopoly" and a menace to the Re- 
public ; he brought England to terms by opening its West 
India ports to the commerce of the United States ; he 
made France pay a just but long-combated indebtedness, 
settled disputes of old-standing with Spain and Denmark, 
compelled Austria to friendly relations, and forced Europe 
to recognize and admit the strength and importance of the 
United States as a nation. The age of Andrew Jackson, 
from 1830 to 1840, was indeed the era of Democracy; and 
its effects were far-reaching, touching in results the prog- 
ress of the world. 

The influence of American democracy, of which Jackson 



WHyVr "OLD HICKORY" HELPED TO ACCOMPLISH. 1 53 

was the leader, were felt, indeed, though the world may not 
admit it, in every phase of human life. Chartism and the 
Anti-Corn-Law in England sprang into existence because of 
it ; the Constitutional liberty of France, under the citizen- 
king Louis Philippe, felt its persuasions, and brought about 
a changed national feeling ; the people of Germany acknowl- 
edged its force, and grew restless under the foolish political 
system of petty and ever jealous states without real or 
helpful unity ; Austria, most conservative and reactionary 
of monarchies, was filled with constantly growing secret 
societies, whose one demand was for self-government and 
free institutions ; Italy, bound down by the tyranny of the 
"Holy Alliance," grew restive beneath what the Alliance 
called its "incontestable rights" of repression, and secretly 
began a combination of the people for unity and representa- 
tive government ; even the progressive party of unprogres- 
sive Spain forced from its unwilling ruler a constitution and 
an elective chamber (the Cortes, or "Courts"), while Den- 
mark, Sweden, and Norway displayed more than ever before 
their yearnings for distinctive and progressive nationality. 
Only in Russia, the home of depotism, were the peo- 
ple's desires disregarded, liberalism sternly repressed, the 
concessions of the Emperor's predecessor revoked, Po- 
land and the Palatinates absorbed, and what are known 
as reactionary or "back-sliding" tendencies displayed. But 
Siberia had to be taken as a political prison because of the 
liberty-loving restlessness of many of Russia's sons; and 
literature, the handmaid of freedom, progressed in spite 
of imperial edict, censorship, and persecution. The demo- 
cratic principles of Andrew Jackson found lodgment every- 
where in Christian soil, even though the name of Andrew 



154 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Jackson was unknown to the patriots of Europe, and to the 
people feehng their way slowly towards recognition. 

Those rulers who seek to confront a political problem, 
usually endeavor to dodge it by diverting the attention of 
the people to other interests. The growing power of a 
people has often displayed itself in national or colonial ex- 
pansion, as business interests or self-strength have dictated; 
and rulers who see in conquest a road out of domestic agita- 
tion have eagerly seconded this demand, and attempted the 
enlargement of the national limits. It was this that raised 
and ruined Napoleon. It was this which, after his death, 
and when the nation had again righted itself from the dis- 
turbances of 1830, set France out on its new career of 
conquest by crossing the Mediterranean into Africa ; and, 
because of the growing power of the people, England 
poured her troops into India and Southeastern Asia, Russia 
pushed her forces still farther into western Asia and across 
the Balkans, and even republican America, with eyes only 
for the fertile fields of the West, elbowed the original red 
Americans still farther from their own neighborhood, and 
nearer to the Rockies and the distant shores of the Pacific. 

But Christianity does not have a monopoly of all the 
virtues ; and patriotism lives in Mussulman and Afghan, in 
Indian and Asiatic, even as it does in Englishman, German, 
and white American. 

In Algiers, which France sought to wrest from native 
control, Abd-El-Kader led his countrymen in an heroic and 
long-continued resistance ; Dost Mohammed, the Afghan, 
resenting Enghsh "expansion," stood boldly out against 
the British arms, as many a Mahratta and East Indian 
patriot had done before him ; in Turkey, the power of Rus- 



WHAT "OLD HICKORY" HELPED TO ACCOMPLISH. 155 

sia was defied and attacked by Ibrahim Pacha and the 
"progressive" and determined opponents of the Porte; 
while in the Illinois morasses, and amid the beautiful Wis- 
consin dells, the last of the red Indian patriots, Black 
Hawk, the chief of the Sacs, made a desperate but un- 
availing stand against the resistless advance of white 
aggression. 

But patriotism, though heroic and glorious, is not always 
destined to succeed, for the reason that human progress 
demands the sacrifice of self for the good of the race. 
The conquest of savage or semi-civilized lands by the forces 
of Christian civilization seems necessary to the advance- 
ment and welfare of the world ; so Algerian and Afghan, 
East Indian and red American, though battling in the late 
thirties for the defence of their homelands, were struggling 
for what was alike impossible and impracticable ; for the 
law of human progress is based upon what has come to be 
called the survival of the fittest, the triumph of Christianity 
over barbarism by absorption, expansion, and a new con- 
solidation. 

In the very year in which these '' expansions by inva- 
sion " were going forward, Alfred Tennyson, the young 
prophet of progress, was putting his theory of growth into 
words : — 

" Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns." 

And when he lifts the hero of that same noble " Locksley 
Hall " poem out of a lazy content into strenuous endeavor, 
rousing him from a do-nothing to a do-something condi- 
tion, how grandly, again, the poet typifies the spirit of the 



156 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

age that from 1830 to 1840 felt the influence of democracy 
and the promptings of progress : — 

" Fool ! again the dream, the fancy 1 but I know my words are wild, 
For I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child. 

I to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains, 
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains 1 

Mated with a squalid savage, what to me were sun or clime.-' 
I, the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time. 

I, that held it better man should perish one by one, 

Than that earth should stand at gaze, like Joshua's moon in Ajalon. 

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range ; 
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing groove of change. 

Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day, 
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." 

Those winged and inspiring words of Alfred Tennyson, 
in 1837, have stood as the text for all noble endeavor, and 
for all real advancement in thought, condition, and achieve- 
ment, through all the years down to the dawn of the new 
century, which is to see those theories developed into prac- 
tical results. 

Still, for all these prophetic utterances of 1837, prophecy 
was for the future. The creative faculty of man was at- 
tempting ; achievement was to come later. Although the 
world felt, imperceptibly, the thrill of an awakening en- 
deavor, the mass of the people had little if any knowledge 
of this advance ; and the political masters of Europe were 
still endeavoring to compass their ends by the outgrown 
methods of on old-time diplomacy. Russia, with her me- 
diseval court, was still clinging to her traditional and auto- 



WHAT "OLD HICKORY" HELPED TO ACCOMPLISH. 157 

cratic way of "running things," and was even hoping to 
control Europe by making allies of those whom England 
sought to draw to her own side. But she could not. In 
1837 Austria, Russia, and Prussia were closely watchful of 
one another, uncertain whether they were to be friends or 
foes, but certain of one thing, that England should not use 
either of them for her own benefiit. 

" Within fifty years," Napoleon had said, trying his hand 
at prophecy early in the century, " Europe will be either 
republican or Cossack. " In 1837 it had become neither, 
either by acceptance or conquest ; but, glancing back from 
the outlook of a new century, we can see that, even in 
1837, the republican rather than the Russian element was 
most successfully at work, and that, unknowingly but 
surely, the spirit of Andrew Jackson the democrat, rather 
than that of Nicholas the czar, was the impelling force of 
the world. 

The world of 1837 would have laughed this idea to 
scorn ; for, to all appearances, conservatism rather than 
progress was the ruling spirit of the age. The czar of 
Russia was the recognized head of this old-time, non-pro- 
gressive spirit that held all the courts of Europe tightly 
bound with the red-tape of a seemingly changeless rule of 
ceremonial. Stubborn, narrow, and unimaginative, Nich- 
olas of Russia hated the slightest advance toward popular 
government, and firmly believed that the only safety of 
nations was in the maintenance of an absolute ruler's des- 
potic power. To the cautious and delicate diplomacy of 
Metternich, the Austrian who, since the downfall of Na- 
poleon, had been the recognized power in the political 
affairs of Europe, now succeeded the rude and harsh hand 



158 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

of the Russian czar, who dreamed, even as Napoleon had 
prophesied, of making all Europe Cossack. 

In Germany this czar-inspired despotism sought to 
crush out the rising spirit of progress which was known 
as " Young Germany," but which would not stay crushed. 
This progressive spirit, to which the name of " Young 
Germany" was given, had for its object the liberation of 
German politics, religion, and manners from the old con- 
ventional shackles which such out-of-date diplomatists as 
Metternich, and such pronounced despots as Czar Nicholas, 
would place upon the people of Europe. It was the out- 
growth of what Balzac, the Frenchman, called " the four 
immense revolutions: America in 1776, France in 1789, 
Europe in 18 15, and France in 1830" — the protests of 
patriotism against tyranny, of the people against their task- 
masters. It came, too, because of that growing spirit of 
democracy which was slowly, but surely, absorbing the 
world — the spirit best typified by Andrew Jackson, the 
American. One of the leaders of this European protest 
was Heinrich Heine, a German Jew of Diisseldorf, — a 
cynic, but a poet, a journalist, a philosopher, and a patriot. 
Self-exiled from his own land because his opinions were not 
palatable to the conservative government of Germany, he 
took up his residence in Paris, and wrought and wrote for 
German unity, German emancipation, and a real liberty for 
Europe and the world. 

Heine has been called the " torch-bearer of his time ; a 
soldier in the war of the liberation of humanity." He had 
a bad side and a good side, as do very many reformers, or 
those who try to right the wrongs of the world ; but his 
labors were for progress, and to-day the world, which in 



WHAT "OLD HICKORY" HELPED TO ACCOMPLISH. 1 59 

1840 had no name too bad for Heinrich Heine, now 
recognizes his worth as a factor in the enfranchisement of 
Germany, as the satirist who saw through and punctured 
every ancient fraud and every bubble of sham, as, in fact, 
one who had, as one sfudent of his character remarks, "set 
himself to fight the old and hail the new." In summing 
up the world's workers for liberty in the years when 
democracy was gaining its sure foothold, we must" never 
forget the German exile in France, Heinrich Heine, poet, 
philosopher, and patriot. 

As has already been stated, he had praised God for Amer- 
ica, and hailed it as Europe's "loop-hole of escape," — a 
loop-hole which, as he expressed it, was "larger than the 
dungeon itself." But others besides Heine had appreciated 
this fact. For years European emigration to America had 
been on the increase ; as steam took the place of sailing- 
vessels, and home-making in Europe was a hard matter for 
those who felt that they were toiling without hope, more 
and more, men and women from the old world crossed the 
seas to America to find homes in what was, in truth, to 
them, the land of promise. In the ten years of what we 
may call the age of Jackson — the period between 1830 
and 1840 — six hundred thousand immigrants from Europe 
landed in America, and found in its wider liberty a haven 
from the distress and disorder that kept them poor or held 
them down in Europe. 

There was room enough and work in plenty for these 
"exiles from aristocracy" in the "home of democracy." 
Certain American-born, though short-sighted "patriots," 
objected to the foreign "conquest of America," fearing evil 
results. But the years have proved them wrong. 



l6o THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

" She's big enough and broad enough to keep us safe from harm, 
And Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm," 

ran a popular song of that day, and these new comers 
were those who helped develop the almost boundless re- 
sources of the United States ; for it was their unskilled 
but sturdy labor that built the cities and railroads of the 
North, made productive the corn-fields and wheat-fields of 
the West, and, without the partisan spirit of the native- 
born American, really did good by their entrance into the 
field of national politics. 

" Europe still leads the world," wrote the remarkable 
young Frenchman Balzac, in 1836. "If her intellectual 
superiority should ever be taken from her," he added 
prophetically, " it could only be by Northern America ; but 
there, for a long time to come, territory will not be lacking 
for the population to develop." 

American territory was largely to be developed by the 
"swarming hosts of Europe;" but toward "intellectual 
superiority," even in the day when young Balzac wrote, 
eminent Americans were already striving. Soon after 
1830 new lights in literature dawned upon the world, and 
before 1840 the first works of writers whose names are 
now foremost in English literature had appeared, — the 
poems of Longfellow and Whittier and Holmes, the ro- 
mances of Hawthorne, the historical works of Bancroft and 
Prescott, Hildreth and Motley, the tales of Poe, and the 
essays of Emerson and Channing. The greatest of Ameri- 
can orators, Webster and Clay, were stirring men by their 
eloquence, and making Americans by their passionate 
patriotism : while among lawyers, Kent and Story were 
not surpassed on either side of the Atlantic; and John 



WHAT "OLD HICKORY" HELPED TO ACCOMPLISH. l6l 

Marshall, " the greatest of chief justices,", had only just 
closed his long and useful life. 

And, in 1837, Horace Mann became Secretary of the 
Massachusetts Board of Education. That meant great 
things for America ; for, from the advent of Horace Mann 
into the field of popular education, dates the real growth 
of that bulwark of the State — free pubHc schools. And 
Horace Mann is acknowledged to be the " Father of the 
American Common Schools," while thousands of boys and 
girls to-day — yes, millions, for his influence extended across 
the seas — have reason to cherish his memory, and bless 
his name, for making education possible to them and learn- 
ing easier. 

So, when 1 840 came, the world could show a substantial 
advance, even though still, throughout the earth, millions 
were degraded by ignorance, hampered by social conditions, 
and hopeless of any improvement ; millions, indeed, had 
neither the conception or knowledge of what really was self- 
improvement. That must come by slow growth and by the 
philanthropic, reformatory, commercial, and even selfish 
endeavors of those who, looking out over the world, saw 
where, here and there, the seeds of democracy, of influence, 
of enlightment, of business enterprise or political power, 
could be sown to good advantage, and so went out into the 
world to work, according to their lights or according to 
their desires, for the advancement and progress of man. 



" / Kossuth am ! O Future, thou 

That clearest the Just and blotfst the vile, 
O'er this small dust in reverence bow, 
Rememberi7tg what I was erewhile. 

" I was the chosen trutn^ wherethrough 
07ir God sent forth awakening breath ; 
Came cJiaitis ? Came death ? The strain He blew 
Soitnds on, outliving chains and death." 

James Russell Lowell. 



THE AGE OF KOSSUTH. 
Revolution. 

{1840-1850.) 



LOUIS KOSSUTH, 

PATRIOT OF HUNGARIAN LIBERTY, 
Born Monak, H ujigary , April 27, 1802, 
Died Turin, Italy, March 20, 18^4. 



CHAPTER X. 

WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. 
[From 1840 to 1843.) 

IN the year 1840 Louis Adolph Thiers was prime minis- 
ter of France ; in that same year Louis Kossuth was 
released from an Austrian prison, only to redouble his 
efforts for liberalizing Austria or delivering Hungary from 
the heel of Austrian despotism. Both were comparatively 
young men, Thiers being forty-three and Kossuth thirty- 
four, and each, in his way, exerted a remarkable influence 
upon the century in which he lived ; for both were hailed 
as "liberators," and both were, in their separate spheres, 
organizers and leaders of that mid-century protest of the 
people which makes the decade from 1840 to 1850 the 
era of constitutional revolution, best typified, perhaps, 
by that restless, vigorous, unsuccessful, and yet in his 
very defeat successful, Hungarian agitator, from whom it 
may be rightly called the age of Kossuth. 

In 1840 Louis Philippe, whom the Revolution of 1830, 
thanks to the young Thiers and the old Lafayette, had 
raised to the throne of France, " by the will of the people," 
still occupied that unstable seat, under the popular nick- 
name of " the Citizen King." 

In 1840 Lafayette had long been dead; Thiers, "an 
ambitious little statesman," as his English critics rather 
contemptuously called him, was pluckily endeavoring to 

165 



l66 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

make France a constitutional monarchy, in which the power 
of the pariiament should be above the authority of the 
king, — a belief expressed by him in the famous words, 
" The king reigns and does not govern." France, however, 
was not yet advanced to that picket-ground of progress. 
To France's ruler and lawmaker, a king was a king — not 
a president, or simply a chief executive ; and though Louis 
Philippe ruled, not by so-called divine right, but " by the 
will of the people," it was not an easy rule, even for a man 
who had passed through so many experiences as had this 
shifty, uncertain, and most unsatisfactory king of France. 

Since the day when Napoleon had invaded Egypt, and 
especially since that later day when the vigorous and able 
Mehemet Ali, viceroy of Egypt, had successfully revolted 
against his suzerain, the Sultan of Turkey, Christian Europe 
had been endeavoring to solve what has for years been 
known as "the Eastern Question." The pith of this 
question was who should have the control in Europe by 
obtaining and keeping the greatest influence over the 
slowly decaying Turkish Empire, which the Czar Nicholas 
wittily called "the sick man of the East." 

"We have on our hands," said the Czar to the British 
ambassador, one January day in 1844, "a sick man, a very 
sick man. It would be a great misfortune if one of these 
days he should happen to die before the necessary arrange- 
ments are all made. . . . The man is certainly dying, and 
we must not allow such an event to take us by surprise." 

Other statesmen of Europe, even before that January 
day in 1844, had been endeavoring to guard against thus 
being taken by surprise. One of these was Thiers the 
Frenchman, who, because of the hold which France once 



WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. 167 

had upon the East, desired to regain and keep it. But the 
other powers were stronger than France ; and in July, 1840, 
England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia formed an alliance 
to resist and oppose the demands upon the young sultan of 
Turkey, made by Mehemet Ali, the Egyptian ; for these, 
they decided, if granted, would have strengthened Egypt 
and crippled Turkey. France, as the supporter of Mehe- 
met Ali, was excluded from this European alliance ; but 
Thiers, as the prime minister of France, singlehanded, 
held out against all Europe, and very nearly brought about 
a Continental war. 

But Louis Philippe, king of France, had more regard for 
the friendship of England than for dominance in the East, 
and would give the Egyptian ruler no support or aid. The 
energetic Thiers was superseded by the cooler and more 
calculating Guizot ; and Mehemet Ali, deserted by France, 
had no alternative but to yield to the armed invasion made 
by England and Austria, and give up the territory and the 
concessions he had won from Turkey. 

This failure in diplomacy made the French people angry 
and critical ; so Louis Philippe, to recover his popularity, 
conceived the idea of pleasing the people by begging from 
England " the ashes of Napoleon." 

For nineteen years the body of the great emperor — at 
once " the glory and the scourge of his age " — had re- 
posed beneath the historic willow-tree on the rocky island 
of St. Helena. 

" Though more than haK the world was his, 
He died without a rood his own ; 
And borrowed from his enemies 
Six foot of ground to lie upon." 



1 68 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

So wrote the Englishman Thackeray, hater of what he 
called "the art of cutting throats ;" but in a "half-sort of 
way," an admirer as well as a satirizer of England's great- 
est enemy — Napoleon. 

It seems, somehow, to have got into the head of the 
blundering "Citizen King " of France that he could recover 
himself in the good opinion of the French people by bring- ' 
ing the bones of the great Napoleon back to the France 
he had glorified — and decimated. 

So he set the two rival Frenchmen at work, — Thiers, 
the prime minister, and Guizot, the ambassador to Eng- 
land, — and through them begged from England the body 
of Napoleon. 

England gave an immediate and gracious consent — I 
have often wondered if there was not a reason concealed 
in that ready consent ; for Lord Palmerston, the prime 
minister of England, was a remarkably clear and far-seeing 
man, and particularly disliked the king of France. At any 
rate, consent was given ; and on the fifteenth of October, 
1840, — the twenty-fifth anniversary of the arrival of the 
famous prisoner at St. Helena, — the remains of Napoleon 
Bonaparte were taken from the modest grave beneath the 
St. Helena willow, and transported to France in a French 
frigate, whose captain was the son of the king of France. 

In due time, with much ceremonial and many salutes, 
the body of Napoleon was delivered at Paris, where, on the 
fifteenth of December, with great pomp and parade (al- 
though Thackeray, who was present, denounced the whole 
affair as cheap, — " sham splendors," not worthy the 
great name and fame of Napoleon), it was solemnly en- 
tombed beneath the great dome of the Invalides. 



WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. 169 

" Sire," said the French prince, " I bring you the body 
of the Emperor Napoleon." 

"I receive it," said the French king, standing beside the 
catafalque, "in the name of the people of France." 

Thus was the great Napoleon buried according to his own 
expressed desire — " by the banks of the Seine, among the 
French people I love so well;" and King Louis Philippe, who 
thought he had done a great stroke of policy, turned from 
the new grave of Napoleon, and took the path to his own 
political grave and that of the Orleans dynasty, which he 
was thus unconsciously preparing. 

The first sign of this pathway to ruin appeared even be- 
fore that "second funeral of Napoleon." For in August, 
1840, while the French ships were on their way to St. 
Helena to carry out the pet plan of Louis Philippe, a ship 
sailed into the port of Boulogne having as passengers fifty 
Frenchmen and a tame eagle. The leader of this " expedi- 
tion" was a young Frenchman of thirty-two, the Prince 
Louis Napoleon, presumptive head of the exiled house of 
Bonaparte, and nephew of the great emperor. Once before, 
in 1836, he had returned to France; and, for endeavoring 
to " corrupt" the French garrison at Strasburg, he had been 
arrested, imprisoned, and exiled to America. Now he 
came again for a second attempt. 

" The ashes of the Emperor, my uncle, should not return 
but into a regenerated France," he announced ; and, landing 
' near Boulogne, he called on all Frenchmen to rally about 
the eagle, — Napoleon's famous symbol. 

But the garrison at Boulogne was not moved by the ap- 
peal of the unsupported adventurer ; the people did not 
rally, and the attempt proved as tame as the eagle. Louis 



I/O THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Napoleon was arrested while endeavoring to escape, and, 
being brought to trial, was sentenced to imprisonment for 
life in the Castle of Ham, a state prison not far from the 
old city of Amiens. 

That made Louis Napoleon a martyr ; and the French 
people, while celebrating the return of the bones of the 
great Napoleon, did not forget that the " nephew of his 
uncle" was feared and persecuted by the government of 
Louis Philippe. This might be called the second " Napole- 
onic " mistake of Louis Philippe. The first was, as I have 
said, the bringing back of the body of Napoleon ; for, while 
it awoke the " slumbering echoes " of the national pride, it 
also set the people to comparing the present with the past. 

"Napoleon the Emperor," they declared, "never let his 
country fall from the foremost place in the councils of Eu- 
rope, as has King Louis Philippe." 

And France, while extolling Napoleon, bitterly lamented 
its present humiliation. 

The "councils of Europe" were indeed "connected" 
without France. The interference in the affairs of Turkey 
and Egypt from which France was excluded, the alliance 
with Russia against which France made a disregarded pro- 
test, the career of English expansion in Asia by which Eng- 
land blocked the Asiatic efforts of her ally Russia, and at 
the same time wrested from China the important island 
possession of Hong Kong, raised England to a leadership 
in Europe and the East, and placed Lord Palmerston, the 
prime minister of England, in the position of the foremost 
statesman of Europe. 

" France dare not declare war against the four united 
powers of Europe," he said, and France did not dare. 



WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. I/I 

But Guizot, the crafty diplomat, had succeeded Thiers, 
the energetic statesman, as the master-spirit in France. 
He wisely saw that peace and friendship were safer for 
France than war, and he bent all his energies to securing 
these. 

" A war with England, at this time, would be the great- 
est of all calamities," he said ; and, while recognizing the 
wounded pride of France, he bravely faced the rising oppo- 
sition, and appealed to the thrift and prudence of his coun- 
trymen, rather than to their vanity and ambition. The 
administration of Peel in England succeeded, in 1841, to 
that of Palmerston ; friendship rather than enmity between 
the rival nations was fostered ; the king of France and 
the queen of England exchanged visits ; and, by Guizot 's 
wise methods, what was known as the entente cordial — a 
friendly understanding — was established between France 
and England. 

In England, however, grown so powerful abroad, affairs 
at home were not going smoothly. The success of demo- 
cracy in America urged the people, who still lacked suffi- 
cient voice and representation, to demand greater rights. 
The Reform Bill of 1832, described as "the greatest politi- 
cal fact of the Nineteenth Century," did not give the people 
the privilege of local self-government they desired, and agi- 
tation was not stilled by expansion abroad or concession at 
home. The " Chartists " demanded aiid threatened ; par- 
ties, parliaments, and ministers changed, as land-owners, 
manufacturers, and agitators argued, moved, petitioned, and 
protested ; Richard Cobden and his Anti Corn-Law League 
fought to alleviate the wide-spread suffering and distress 
throughout the kingdom, and advocated, as the best means 



1/2 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

of relief and healthy growth, the principles of peace, non- 
intervention, retrenchment, and free-trade. 

"Among moral reformers," says Mr. Mackenzie, "no 
man can challenge a higher place than Richard Cobden. 
" No mission loftier than his, or fulfilled more purely and 
nobly, was ever undertaken by man." 

English opinion, however, did not so regard him in 1 840, 
and the unjust laws that kept the people of England poor 
were but slowly changed. But they were changed at last ; 
ministers and parliaments came to see the wisdom of the 
demands of the reformers ; and the material prosperity of 
England to-day was largely brought about by the agita- 
tions and efforts of Richard Cobden, who, in the years be- 
tween 1840 and 1845, was, with his associates, earnestly 
advocating his theories, and slowly educating the justice 
and shaking the conviction of his native land. 

In other lands, too, reformers were at work. France, as 
you have seen, was restless, though apparently tranquil ; 
Germany, to whose throne (or rather to the throne of 
Prussia) a new king had succeeded in 1840, was at first 
pleased with his promise of liberality and concession ; but 
the new king proved to be only more enlightened, not less 
absolute, than his father. Bavaria, Hesse-Cassel, and Baden, 
were agitated by demands for reform ; Hungary, Bohemia, 
and Italy talked of popular rights ; and it was seen by ear- 
nest students of the time, that the day was not far distant 
when prince and people would be in open strife. Austria 
was still virtually ruled by Metternich — the "left-over 
statesman " of Napoleonic days, who, as Mr. Holland de- 
clares, "worked steadily from 18 14 to 1848, at much sacri- 
fice of ease and pleasure, in hope of preserving civilization 



WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. 173 

and religion from being destroyed by any new revolu- 
tion." 

But the people of Austria, an empire of different nation- 
alities, became restless under the growth, in the nations 
about them, of freer institutions and more liberal modes of 
government than they enjoyed, and neither the reactionary 
Prince Metternich nor the weak-minded Emperor Ferdi- 
nand had a pleasant or peaceful time. In Hungary, espe- 
cially, the most powerful "fief of the empire," was this 
discontent growing, led on by Louis Kossuth, that "child 
of the people." Outstripping in his desire for Hungarian 
independence, the Count Szechenyi, the father of the re- 
form movement, and the deputy, Francis Deak, who led 
the liberal agitation, Kossuth took so dangerously advanced 
a position in behalf of Hungarian nationality that even the 
Count Szechenyi drew back in fear, and endeavored to stay 
the onward rush of Kossuth, as the champion of liberty 
and the unterrified opponent of Austrian despotism. 

All who contribute to progress are entitled to recogni- 
tion. Although the Count Szechenyi became fearful of 
the storm he had raised, and sought to curb it, his contri- 
butions to Europe's enfranchisement were at once large and 
practical. 

" Do not constantly trouble yourselves with the vanished 
glories of the past," he said to his countrymen. "Rather 
let your determined patriotism bring about the prosperity 
of the beloved fatherland. Say not ' Hungary has been.' 
Say, rather, * Hungary shall be! ' " 

But Louis Kossuth, who has well been described as "the 
very incarnation of the great democratic ideas of his age" 
— the fruit, it may be, of the era established by Andrew 



174 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Jackson — was not content to advise. His desire was to 
do. 

When the Count Szechenyi and the Hungarian aristoc- 
racy drew back from his leadership, and tried to call a halt, 
Kossuth repeated his demand for independence. 

"With you, if you choose," he said boldly, to those who 
counselled moderation. " But without you or against you, 
if it must be." 

These were brave words, and they found an echo in the 
heart of every patriot and lover of liberty throughout the 
world. Poland and Ireland, each deeming itself an enslaved 
nation, roused themselves to unsuccessful action. Mickie- 
wicz, the exiled Pole, the poet of a down-trodden people, 
"the consolation of a proud and oppressed race," as he has 
been called, sought in vain to awaken Europe to a renewed 
interest in the hopeful but smothered patriots of Poland ; 
and in Ireland, Daniel O Connell, the Irish agitator, " the 
incarnation of the people," born in the birth-year of the 
American Revolution, labored and argued for Irish inde- 
pendence, demanded the repeal of the Act of Union be- 
tween Great Britain and Ireland, and on the famous Hill 
of Tara, in August, 1843, gathered a quarter of a million 
of dissatisfied Irishmen, and by his marvellous eloquence 
swayed the vast multitude to passion, patriotism, and tears. 

But little came of it. 

" The harp that once through Tara's halls 
The soul of music shed " 

fell stringless and broken again. In the following October, 
O' Connell was arrested as a public agitator ; he was tried, 
and condemned to imprisonment, but was pardoned, and, 



WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. I/^ 

bereft of his power and leadership, died soon after, a broken 
old man, possessing the sympathy of the world, but mourn- 
ing the impossibility of ever "freeing Ireland." 

So, throughout the world, the years between 1840 and 
1845 saw the growth of the demand for constitutional 
liberty — the chief factor in the political progress of the 
Nineteenth Century. Canada clamored for it ; and in 
1 84 1 Upper and Lower Canada were joined into a united 
province, and received from the British government con- 
cessions which have made what is now the '* Dominion " a 
faithful part of the British Empire ; the Cretans tried it 
in 1 84 1, only to be again crushed down by Turkey ; while 
in the rich province of Puerto Principe the " Puritans of 
Cuba," as they have been called, were again showing their 
restlessness beneath the hated yoke of Spain. 

In enfranchised South America things were not as the 
lovers of liberty desired. "The New World," wrote Bal- 
zac at that time, " is still delivered over to revolutions. . . . 
When one thinks of the silly things that have been written 
on the liberal governments of America, one cannot help 
wondering how such ideas ever acquired popularity." But 
Balzac was an energetic young Frenchman, who, because 
he was a genius, felt that he knew all things. He did not, 
however, vmderstand the Spanish-American character, and 
could not appreciate the truth that Victor Hugo saw, that 
" Equality must have a synonym — Humanity," and that 
humanity was a quality that enfranchised South America 
had yet to learn. 

Even the great republic of the United States — the pre- 
ceptor and leader in righteous revolution — was learning 
this but slowly. The twenty-five " sovereign States " that 



iy6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

composed the republic in 1840 were only then beginning 
the agitation that, in time, made America really free ; and 
when the census of 1 840 showed the Southern States that 
they were really falling behind their Northern associates in 
wealth and population, they sought to break the Missouri 
Compromise of 1820, and by the formation of%lave States 
out of the unorganized national domain west of the Missis- 
sippi, regain the power and control, that seemed to be slip- 
ping from them. 

In the North, slowly but surely, the work of the lovers 
of freedom was already beginning to bear fruit. Often 
fanatical in their assertions, and unwise in their actions, the 
handful of Abolitionist reformers made slow converts — 
but they made them ; and the demand for " free soil, free 
labor, and free men," which, a few years later, became the 
rallying cry of a new political party, was, even in 1 840, ac- 
cepted as the necessity for real American progress, by all 
who were gradually growing into that advocacy of liberal 
ideas which reared itself upon an aggressive revolt from 
the old methods and the old tyrannies. 

Literature, the handmaid of progress, was already lead- 
ing the van in behalf of real freedom ; and Garrison, who 
said boldly, " I will be as harsh as truth and as uncom- 
promising as justice," found his work supplemented by the 
philippics of Wendell Phillips and the pleas of Charles 
Sumner ; while Whittier, the poet of freedom, perhaps did 
more in crystallizing the conscience and thought of the. 
North than any other writer of those days of a seemingly 
unpopular revolution. From 1833 to 1848 the Quaker 
poet, whose verses, as Bryant said, " stirred the blood like 
a trumpet calling to battle," was writing and publishing 



WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. 1 77 

his "Voices of Freedom;" and, in 1840 hie sent to the 
World's Convention of the Friends of Emancipation, at 
London, those stirring verses that literally " called the 
roll" of the forces of Freedom, and which still stand as a 
remarkable summing up of the cause of liberty as the 
,world saw it in 1 840 : 

" Yes, let them gather — Summon forth 
The pledged philanthropy of Earth, 
From every land whose hills have heard 

The bugle-blast of Freedom waking, 
Or shrieking of her symbol bird 

From out his cloudy eyrie breaking: 
Where justice hath one worshipper. 

Or truth one altar built to her : 
Where'er a human eye is weeping 

O'er wrongs which Earth's sad children know — 
Where'er a single heart is keeping 

Its prayerful watch with human woe : 
Then, let them come, and greet each other. 
And know in each a friend and brother 1 " 

That whole poem is well worth re-reading to-day. Whit- 
tier's " symbol bird " was by no means the " tame eagle " 
of Louis Napoleon ; and his roll-call was more than that — 
it was, in truth, a clarion call for liberty. 

And yet, so halting is even reform sometimes, that 
same convention, assembled in London in June, 1840, to 
advocate and work for freedom throughout the world, re- 
fused seats to the female delegates sent to take part in 
its proceedings ! 

While intellectual and political advances were being 
made throughout the civilized world in this fifth decade 
of the Nineteenth Century, science and invention were 



1/8 THiE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

keeping in step with the advance, while photography, the 
handmaid of science and art, had but just stepped into 
the arena of the world's practical progress. 

In 1839 Arago, a famous French astronomer, announced 
to the French Academy of Science that a panorama artist 
named Daguerre had discovered a way of making per- 
manent sunlight pictures. This was the daguerreotype — 
the forerunner of modern photography. In that same 
year of 1839 ^^^ Englishman named Fox Talbot made 
almost the same discovery ; in 1 840 Professor Draper of 
New York first actually made photographic portraits from 
life. After that, experiments were multiplied ; but the 
invention, even then, was not esteemed as anything more 
than a plaything in art. Daguerreotypes were luxuries, 
costly, and not always permanent or satisfactory ; and the 
uses to which the sun could be put for the pleasure and 
aid of man were not even dreamed by those "photographic 
cranks " of sixty years ago. In nothing has the Nine- 
teenth Century made more marvellous strides than in the 
art of photography. 

While this beginning of the great enslavement of light 
for the service of man was being made practically possible, 
the ingenuity of man was also seeking quicker means for 
the conveyance of thought. The post-office and the postal 
system of modern civilization, dating back to the beginning 
of the thirteenth century, when the University of Paris 
established an inland postal service, had progressed but 
slowly through all the years thereafter, although Oliver 
Cromwell, greatest of Englishmen, saw the value of an 
organized and reliable postal service, and, during his pro- 
tectorate, a regular system of postage and carriers was 



WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. 1 79 

attempted in England. Louis the Eleventh, a great but 
unscrupulous French king, founded in 1464 the postal 
system of France, while the Austrian postal service is one 
of the oldest on record. In America, Benjamin Franklin 
first made the American post-office self-supporting ; but 
all these systems were but attempts in the way of reliable 
service, and amounted to nothing of practical value or 
benefit until the real postal reform was put into operation 
in England in 1840. 

John Hill, an Englishman, was the originator of the 
plan of penny postage in Cromwell's day, although his 
efforts came to naught ; but another public benefactor of 
the same name — Rowland Hill, of Birmingham — made 
himself in the "forties" the father of the modern postal 
service by recommending a penny postage on all letters in 
the United Kingdom not exceeding half an ounce in weight. 

"Perhaps," he said, "the difficulties in the way might 
be obviated by using a bit of paper just large enough to 
bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous 
wash which, by applying a little moisture, might be at- 
tached to the back of the letter." And there you have 
the modern postage-stamp ! 

Rowland Hill's recommendations were, after much dis- 
cussion, accepted by Parliament ; they were assented to by 
the British government, and penny postage began in Janu- 
ary, 1840. No suggestion of practical utility, so one au- 
thority declares, has ever been " so speedily effective in 
promoting reforms in any degree so beneficial to the human 
race," as was this penny-postage plan instituted by Rowland 
Hill. To-day no country so small, no nation so large, but 
has an established postal service ; and the system of inter- 



l8o THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

national postage is one of the most effective methods of 
promoting the "neighborhness," if not the brotherhood 
of man. 

Following closely upon this modern and beneficial meth- 
od in 1840 for the systematic communication of thought, 
came the official acceptance and adoption of Professor 
Morse's wonderful invention of the electric telegraph. 
After disheartening failures, rebuffs, and discouragements, 
the determined inventor at last found himself empowered 
by Congress to construct an experimental telegraph line 
between Baltimore and Washington. It was completed ; 
and on the twenty-fourth of September, 1 844, Morse stood 
beside his instrument, set up in the Chamber of the Su- 
preme Court in the Capitol, and despatched over the wires 
to Baltimore the message suggested to him by a girl of fif- 
teen, who stood beside him at his instrument : " What hath 
God wrought! " 

God had indeed wrought much — for science, for civili- 
zation, and for mankind ; for, from the persistent endeavors 
of this undaunted inventor, came the rapid and accurate 
conveyance of thought. To-day two oceans are crossed 
and seamed with electric cables, and the news of the world 
is read each morning in every civilized home. Samuel 
Finley Breeze Morse in 1844 stretched the first wire of 
that magnificent system that in time brought all the world 
in touch, and no invention or happening of the Nineteenth 
Century has so signally united and benefited all mankind. 

If was in 1840 that lucifer matches, before that date 
only a cumbrous and bothersome experiment, became so 
cheap as to secure universal adoption and discard the old- 
time methods of producing light and fire, while the light- 



WHY THE PEOPLE GREW RESTLESS. l8l 

ing and heating of the houses of the people by gas and oil 
and coal made rapid strides during those busy, creative 
years toward the close of the half century. 

So, gradually, the march of progress which affected social 
order and political forms, which increased the desires of 
men for greater constitutional and personal liberty, and 
drew the world's unrest onward to the new upheaval that 
closed the first half of the Nineteenth Century, exhibited 
itself also in the fields of intellectual and scientific en- 
deavor ; while the years that brought forward Carlyle and 
Emerson, Balzac and Hugo, Strauss and Schelling, Schop- 
enhauer and Humboldt, Ranke and Bancroft, Tennyson 
and Macaulay, Agassiz and Whittier, and made them impor- 
tant factors in the world's developing thought, marked also 
a distinctly forward step in the comfort and enlightenment 
of the race. 



CHAPTER XL 

HOW ALL THE WORLD HAD YET ANOTHER SHAKING-UP. 

{Frof/i 1845 to 18 JO.) 

ON the sixteenth of September, 1845, Abd-El-Kader 
the heroic Arabian patriot, defeated the French 
" expansionists " in Africa ; in June of that same year the 
repubhc of Mexico declared war against the "expansion- 
ists " of North America; and on the fourteenth of Decem- 
ber the Sikhs of the Punjab — the natives of Northern 
India — rose against British expansion. The protest 
against the new order of things — growth by absorption — 
was vigorously begun by the patriots of what Kipling calls 
"the lesser tribes without the law." 

Of course these patriotic protests were fruitless. The 
valiant tribesmen of North Africa were bravely led ; the 
soldiers of Mexico were, as General Grant asserts, "brave 
soldiers inefficiently led ; " the Sikhs of the Punjab, as be- 
came their names, for Sikh means "disciple," were brave 
soldiers and fierce religionists, feud-torn, and united only 
against the English. But, brave or not, they all went down 
in defeat before the invincible though lesser forces of the 
trained soldiers of civilization. Algeria submitted to its 
French conquerors in 1847, and to-day is prosperous under 
French rule ; Mexico closed a losing fight in 1 847, when 
its capital city fell before the irresistible arms of General 
Scott, and nearly a million square miles of territory were 




TYPES OF THE 



Emerson Webster 

Rowland H.ll Morse 

AGE OF KOSSUTH ) O'Connell Kossuth 



HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UT. 183 

annexed, by conquest and purchase, to the United States. 
But to-day Mexico is united because of that war of 1846, 
and her patriots celebrate as holidays the anniversaries of 
Chapultepec and Molino del Rey, which are regarded as 
Mexican defeats. The Punjab was conquered and annexed 
to the British domains in 1849, even though the Sikhs 
were acknowledged to be the bravest foemen faced by the 
English in India ; but to-day the Punjab, with its twenty- 
five millions of inhabitants, is a great, peaceable, and pros- 
perous section of England's Indian Empire, well on its way 
toward a progressive civilization, with schools and colleges, 
railways and telegraphs, newspapers and literary societies, 
trade and manufactures, and life is safer to-day in the Pun- 
jab than it ever was through the long centuries of barbar- 
ism, feud, and warfare. Patriotism, unless accompanied by 
progress, is of little worth ; and education by conquest is 
one of the paths along which mankind advances toward 
final and universal brotherhood. 

It is sometimes hard for us to see this in the midst of 
the sorrows and worries that attend the path of conquest, 
and the immediate effect upon the victor is often scarcely 
less disastrous than upon the vanquished. The first French 
colonists to Algeria either died off, as do most first colo- 
nists, or left in disgust ; the arrogance of British military 
rule led to frequent disturbance in India ; and the conquest 
of Mexico by the United States, more vehemently opposed 
by large numbers of American citizens than any similar 
attempt at " expansion," stirred the slavery fighters of the 
North to indignant protest against the accession of more 
slave territory, and gradually brought about that inevitable 
conflict based upon Abraham Lincoln's immoral declara- 



1 84 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

tion, ten years after the close of the Mexican war, that " a 
house divided against itself cannot stand," and " that a 
government half slave and half free cannot endure." Lit- 
erature came to the aid of this protest against slave expan- 
sion; and the " Biglow Papers" of James Russell Lowell 
— a born reformer in his hatred of tyrants and demagogues 
— helped on the great advance by the pitiless sarcasms of 
one who believed the Mexican war " a national crime, com- 
mitted in behoof of slavery, our common sin." 

The crisis forced upon the American people by their 
success in the war with Mexico was immediate and stern. 
North and South became engaged in a contest of words 
and measures as to the extension or limitation of slavery ; 
and Whittier's ringing words, as he read the terms of the 
treaty of peace with Mexico, roused in the lovers of liberty 
a determination to curb the conquest of the national do- 
main by the "national sin " : — 

" Forever ours 1 for good or ill, on us the burden lies ; 
God's balance, watched by angels, is hung across the skies. 
Shall Justice, Tnith, and Freedom turn the poised and trembling 

scale ? 
Or %hall the Evil triumph, and robber wrong prevail? 
Shall the broad land o'er which our flag in starry splendor waves 
Forego through us its freedom, and bear the tread of slaves? 

By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and shame ; 
By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came ; 
By the Future which awaits us ; by all the hopes which cast 
Their faint and trembling beams across the blackness of the past ; 
And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's freedom died, 
O my people I O my brothers 1 let us choose the righteous side." 

Calhoun for the Southern extremists, and Seward for 
the Northern protestors, fought the battle out on the 



HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. 1 85 

floor of Congress ; the giants of the earher days, Webster 
the Northerner, and Clay the Border-State man, sought to 
arrest the conflict by compromise ; for a time, as Dr. 
Edward Channing puts it, "sentiment yielded to interest," 
and the " Compromise of 1850 admitted California into the 
Union as a free State, permitted no restriction against sla- 
very in the southern territories, and passed, what the North- 
ern reformers denounced as ' the sum of all villanies,' the 
Fugitive Slave Law." 

All this, while an apparent victory for the South, only 
made the North more determined in opposition to the 
growth of slavery, so that the earliest results of the Mexi- 
can war seemed to be distrust, antagonism, and evil. 

And yet to-day, in the light of later events, the Mexican 
war is seen to have been of advantage to both republics ; 
the school of preparation for America's greater and neces- 
sary conflict, the first " strenuous step " along the highway 
of liberty, expansion, and development. 

Meanwhile, across the sea, an even mightier struggle was 
preparing. On the twenty-sixth of May, 1846, Louis Na- 
poleon Bonaparte escaped from his prison in the Castle of 
Ham; Louis Kossuth, who had led a "boycott" of Aus- 
trian manufactures until Hungary should be released, was 
elected, in 1 847, a member of the Hungarian diet, or par- 
liament, and demanded of Austria" constitutional reform ; a 
terrible famine in Ireland, in 1846, forced England to such 
acts of relief as broke down its arbitrary measures for 
"protecting its industries," and pledged the nation to free 
trade ; the rising, independent spirit of the Prussian peo- 
ple compelled the king to call a representative assembly of 
all the German states to discuss the question of popular 



1 86 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

rights ; and throughout all Europe the spirit of protest 
against the old order of kingly despotism seemed once 
again awakening. All the world recognized this; and 
Whittier, poet of freedom, open-eyed for every new ad- 
vance, wrote, jubilantly, in 1848 : — 

"The day is breaking in the East of which the prophet told, 
And brightens up the sky of Time, the Christian Age of Gold ; 
Old Might to Right is yielding, battle blade to clerkly pen, 
Earth's monarchs are her people, and her serfs stand up like men ; 
The isles rejoice together ; in a day are nations born. 
And the slave walks free in Tunis and by Stamboul's Golden Horn ! " 

^ 

The day really "broke in the East" when, on the 
twenty-second of February, 1 848, the birthday of Washing- 
ton, prince of patriots, the French government dispersed 
a banquet in Paris prepared by the advocates of popular 
reform. France was still far from free ; her constitutional 
monarchy was little better than a " close corporation ; " her 
king was tricky and dishonest ; only one Frenchman in 
thirty had the privilege of a vote ; the ruling party in par- 
liament disregarded the public will, and the people were 
ripe for revolt. Grumbling at the selfish king blossomed 
into open protests against the illiberal policy of his minis- 
ters ; speeches of criticism gave place to denunciations of 
the government ; the opposition party in the Assembly 
grew stronger and more insistent ; the people of Paris 
began again, as in the days of the first Revolution, to cry 
for justice ; and at last, when the reform banquet of Feb-- 
ruary 22d was prohibited, the match was set to the tinder. 
The people rose in anger ; they barricaded the streets of 
Paris, and declared war on the government ; the city 



HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. 1 8/ 

militia called out to disperse the rioters, took their part. 
Guizot, the unpopular minister, resigned ; the regulars fired 
on the mob ; the people vowed vengeance ; king Louis 
Philippe beggecl Thiers to act as minister ; the regulars 
were drawn back in submission ; the mob and the militia 
marched on the Tuilleries. 

It was the old story of the Revolution of 1789, without 
its brutality and bloodshed. The mob and the militia tore 
down the barricades ; revolt was storming the palace ; the 
people were in control once more. 

Then Louis PhiHppe abdicated the throne of France in 
favor of his grandson, and disguised as a tradesman, under 
the name of William Smith, fled with the queen in a 
" hack " from Paris and the France he had misgoverned. 
France, weary of his rule, which might have been glorious 
had he but been a man, wished for a republic — and got it ! 

Two days after, on the twenty-fourth of February, 1848, 
the republic was declared ; " Liberty, Equality, and Fra- 
ternity " were again the watchwords of the "sovereign 
people " ; the tricolor was restored as the flag of France ; 
Lamartine, poet and patriot, was made one of the new 
ministry ; the nation accepted the action of Paris and wel- 
comed the republic ; and the second French Revolution — 
that of 1848 — was complete ! 

It needed but this success to set Europe in a blaze. 
Year by year the people had grown more and more dis- 
contented with their condition. They were tired of acting 
as the tools and puppets of self-seeking kings, princes, and 
ministers. The despotism of the Bourbons enraged Italy ; 
the absolutism of Austria infuriated Hungary ; the arro- 
gance of her Prussian king aroused Germany ; and the 



1 88 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

restlessness of the agitator had, for the moment, more 
influence than the command of the tyrant. 

Stirred by the news from Paris, and fired by the elo- 
quence of Kossuth, Hungary spoke out ni bold demand 
for reform, and sent a deputation to King Ferdinand of 
Austria, offering him his choice between reform or revolu- 
tion. As it seemed to be a case of what we call "Hobson's 
choice," reform was granted ; home rule was established 
in Hungary ; Szechenyi and Deak were made members of 
the new Hungarian government, and Kossuth was ap- 
pointed minister of finance. 

By this time poor King Ferdinand of Austria was in hot 
water. The flight of the king of France, and the demands 
of Kossuth, stirred the Austrian people to clamor for 
greater freedom. Headed by the students, who compelled 
the magistrates of the city to go with them, a Vienna mob 
forced its way into the imperial palace, and demanded a 
liberal constitution. Terrified at this uprising of the peo- 
ple, Metternich, the crafty and aristocratic relic of the days 
of despotism, resigned his office of prime minister, and fled 
in a hurry ; the king summoned a national assembly ; but 
when the students, the militia, and the people tried to dic- 
tate laws, King Ferdinand, too, began to fear for his head, 
and fled from his capital. Then Italy, which was under 
Austrian control, followed the lead of Hungary and Aus- 
tria, drove out its viceroys and rulers, sent the Austrian 
garrisons packing, and, headed by Charles Albert, king of 
Sardinia and Savoy, united the peninsula in a defiance of 
its tyrants. 

The uprising grew with success. From the English 
Channel to the borders of Turkey the leaders of the people 



HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. 1 89 

hurrahed for constitutional liberty ; Milan, Messina, Mu- 
nich, Prague, Berlin, Vienna, Naples, and the smaller Ger- 
man cities joined the ranks of reform ; London itself was 
threatened by Chartist mobs ; kings, princes, viceroys, and 
ministers went scurrying for shelter ; even the Pope of 
Rome fled from the Vatican ; the Emperor of Austria 
abdicated ; and the King of Prussia declared his willingness 
to grant reforms and unite all Germany into a nation. If 
only the patriotic leaders of the revolt against old tyrannies 
had joined hands in mutual help and a union for indepen- 
dence, the second half of the Nineteenth Century might 
have dawned upon a free and united Europe. 

But the day for unity of action had not yet come. Suc- 
cess in revolution often reacts upon those who lead it. 
The people of France — or Paris — which is declared to 
be France— split up into parties and cliques, each jealous 
of the other, and each distrusting the other. The taxpayers 
began to grumble at the new burdens laid upon them ; the 
National Assembly undertook to rid itself of the mob that 
had fastened upon it ; the red flag of revolution appeared 
in the streets of Paris ; and the bloody uprising of June 23, 
1848, filled the unruly city with blood. 

Then Louis Napoleon Bonaparte appeared upon the 
scene. Even as the uncle had brought security out of 
chaos, he, the nephew, would redeem France ! 

At least, that is what he said. 

He came over from London where he had been living in 
exile, and where he was serving as a special policeman 
against the Chartist rioters. In June, 1848, he was elected 
to the National Assembly from one of the Paris districts, 
and in September he took his seat. 



190 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

" My name," he said, "is the symbol of order, nationality, 
and glory." 

So France, too, believed. Terrified by the fear of a new 
Revolution, the middle classes — the real strength of 
France — saw in a Bonaparte the organizer of order, the 
safety of the state ; and when, in December, 1848, a presi- 
dent of the Republic for four years was to be chosen, 
Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte adventurer, politician, 
and plotter, was elected by a popular vote of over five mil- 
lions, and proclaimed President of the French Republic 
" one and indivisible," to which he swore to remain faithful, 
"and to fulfil all- the duties imposed upon him by the Con- 
stitution. 

A Napoleon Bonaparte once again guided the affairs of 
France — was he to be Napoleon the Great — or the 
Little? 

''The toadstool," wrote Victor Hugo, "sprouts up at 
the foot of the oak ; but it is not the oak ! " 

Meantime, in Hungary, a real patriot had come to the 
front ; another Louis — Kossuth — assumed leadership " by 
the will of the people." For more than fifty years had the 
independence of Hungary not only been promised but guar- 
anteed by the Austrian kings ; this independence had never 
been established. Through good and ill they stood loyal to 
Austria, and when, in 1806, Napoleon L tried to draw away 
the Hungarians from their Austrian fealty, the tempted 
patriots indignantly refused ; but independence, or, at least, 
constitutional freedom, they would have. For this the wise 
Szechenyi had labored peacefully for years ; failing to ob- 
tain it, the fiery Kossuth proposed to secure it, even by 
force, if need be. 



HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. I91 

The need for force soon came. The Emperor Ferdi- 
nand promised but did not perform. Encouraged by his 
secret messengers, the non-Hungarian provinces refused to 
join the Hungarian uprising and clamored for separate 
rights. Civil war threatened ; and when, in July, 1 848, 
Kossuth, in an impassioned speech to the Hungarian As- 
sembly, asked for money and an army to defend the nation, 
rivals became brothers and patriots, and an army of two 
hundred thousand men was raised for the defence and in- 
dependence of Hungary. 

" You have risen like one man," exclaimed Kossuth, 
with tears in his eyes. " I bow before the greatness of the 
nation." 

For a time the nation, indeed, was great, alike in its 
efforts, its sacrifices, its patriotism, and its successes. 
Under the able leadership of Kossuth, an army was placed 
in the field ; the Croatian insurgents were defeated ; and 
when the Emperor Ferdinand declared the Hungarians 
rebels, and prepared to subdue them, the Assembly ans- 
wered by the defiance of revolution. 

But just then Austria itself caught the French revolu- 
tion fever ; and the Emperor Ferdinand abdicated in favor 
of his nephew Francis Joseph, an energetic young prince 
of .eighteen. 

Even an energetic young prince, however, was not equal 
to a united nation with Kossuth at its head. When Aus- 
tria refused peace or independence, the war of the Revo- 
lution began with spirit. Success followed success ; the 
Hungarian general, Gorgei, drove the invading Austrians 
from the kingdom ; and when Austria begged and received 
the help of Russia, these allies, too, were defeated and 



192 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

driven out. Thereupon Hungary, under the leadership of 
Kossuth, threw off the Hapsburg yoke, and on the four- 
teenth of April, 1849, declared itself a free and indepen- 
dent nation. 

Kossuth was appointed governor ; and the brave defend- 
ers of their homeland, whose successes had alike startled 
and thrilled the world, pledged themselves anew to main- 
tain the liberties of Hungary. The whole nation sang the 
Hungarian Marseillaise — the " Up ! Magyar " of Petofi 
(Magyar being the Hungarian's home-name) : 

" Up 1 Magyar, up ! thy counti^ calls," 

rang this trumpet-call of independence, as the young poet, 
who it has been said, " means more to Hungary than did 
even Burns to Scotland," urged his brothers to the final 
struggle with tyranny, even to the death : 

" Where every fettered race, tired with their chains, 
Muster their ranks and seek the battle plains. 
And, for the struggle, Freedom's flag unfold. 
The sacred signal there inscribed in gold, — 

' For the world's liberty : ' ' 
And, far and wide, the summons to be free 
Fills East and West, and to the glorious fight 
Heroes press forward, battling for the right, — 

There will I die 1 " 

Kossuth, the governor, would have followed up the Hun- 
garian victories by a march upon Vienna, there to force 
the Austrians to terms and ward off the Russian invasion. 
But Gorgei, the general, fell back upon the capital instead, 
for better concentration. The great national enthusiasm 
was frittered away in bickerings and jealousies, as has too 



HOW THE^WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. 193 

often been the case even as in the days of our own " Conway 
Cabal," which nearly wrecked the efforts of Washington. 
Austria and Russia combined to crush out Hungarian lib- 
erty, and invading Hungary, attacked the patriots at every 
available point, forced Gorgei to surrender, drove Kossuth 
and his comrades into exile, and before the close of 1849 
had re-conquered and re-enslaved the kingdom. 

The fate of Hungary was the fate of all other attempted 
revolutions of that time. Lack of union among the leaders 
and jealousy toward the efforts of rival peoples, held back 
the "fettered races" from co-operation and support ; tax- 
payers grumbled at the price of liberty ; conservative men 
feared the excesses of the people ; and the liberation of 
Europe was " unavoidably postponed." 

But the example and influence of Kossuth did not die. 
His heroic endeavors and his appeals for independence 
were as seeds planted in a stubborn soil, which at last bore 
fruit ; and though a new Napoleon betrayed France, and 
Hungary lost for a time her political rights ; though Italian 
unity was defeated, and German and Austrian patriots were 
shot, exiled, or forced into flight, — the dawn of constitu- 
tional freedom came yet nearer to the people who rose to 
enforce it, and 1850 was really the beginning of a new era, 
that of Cavour and nationality. 

Religion, which so often is the companion and sometimes 
the forerunner of liberty, was in those closing years of the 
half-century making progress and attempting unity in the 
world. In 1846 a world*'s convention of Protestant Chris- 
tians was held in London for the purpose of promoting re- 
ligious intercourse, co-operation, unity, and fellowship among 
what were termed Evangelical Christians ; and though the 



194 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

lines were closely "and sternly drawn against liberalism, 
Romanism, and what was judged to be infidelity, the attempt 
toward a more positive brotherhood was of great and last- 
ing benefit, and the religious conditions of the world were 
materially bettered, consolidated, and advanced. 

But, even against what was then received as the accepted 
" Orthodoxy " of the Christian world, a movement which 
logically belongs to this same " era of revolution " was be- 
gun. As America was the home of civil and political 
liberty, so, too, as was its right, did it become the home of 
religious brotherhood and liberty. As Hosea Ballou stood 
for the first, so did William Ellery Channing stand for the 
second. Channing died before the first half of the Nine- 
teenth Century closed, but he had begun the work that 
gradually loosened the fetters of creed. 

" Liberty," so one of his associates and successors de- 
clared, " is the key of his religious, his political, his philan- 
thropic principles. Free the slave, free the serf, free the 
ignorant, free the sinful. Let there be no chains upon the 
conscience, the intellects, the pursuits, or the persons of 
men." 

The world was not yet quite ready to accept this vigor- 
ous doctrine ; but, along different lines, men were working 
towards it. In 1847 Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American, 
aroused intellectual England with his lectures on seven 
"Representative Men;" in his "English Traits," published 
in 1850, he re-introduced England to America ; while his 
searching work as essayist and poet proclaimed, as has well 
been said, "the independence of American thought." 

Thomas Carlyle, the great and vigorous-minded English- 
man, whom Emerson greatly helped to make known to the 



HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. 1 95 

world, was, as 1850 drew near, " expressing vital truths," 
so Leslie Stephen puts it, "with surpassing force." His 
"Oliver Cromwell," published in 1845, re-made English 
history ; and his studies of the needs and duty of mankind 
were so forcibly presented, that the world to-day willingly 
acknowledges the sway of his "powerful intellectual stimu- 
lus." Herbert Spencer, the deep thinker, was formulating 
his new and convincing philosophy; and young Charles 
Darwin, sailing to strange lands in the Beagle, was stor- 
ing up the results of his researches . into hfe and growth, 
which later were to find expression in a theory that was to 
startle, antagonize, and finally readjust the opinions of the 
world. 

The revolution in political and intellectual thought that 
marked this especial period, extended also to mechanical 
production. As intelligence widens, men endeavor to free 
themselves from the deadly drudgery of labor, believing it 
to be better for themselves and the world to be able to 
make a thousand shingles a minute in a Western steam 
sawmill than to expend a lifetime making lace by hand in 
the dark cellars of Belgium. 

The Jacquard loom and Cartwright's power-loom which 
opened the Nineteenth Century, and Arkwright's spinning- 
frame which closed the eighteenth, were developed almost 
out of the recognition of their inventors before the half 
century was completed ; machinery was introduced into 
every branch of weaving and cloth-printing, and the price 
of manufactured material lessened as the ease of production 
improved. In 1846 Ehas Howe's invention of the sewing- 
machine revolutionized hand-sewing, from shoes to carpets, 
and from dresses to harnesses, while labor-saving in ma- 



ig6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

chinery was followed by pain-saving in sickness. For the 
discovery of ether by Dr. Morton of Boston in 1846, and 
of chloroform by Waldie of Liverpool in 1 847, did actually, 
as Mr. Wallace says, " rob the surgeon's knife of its terrors, 
and make it possible to save more lives by surgery than by 
any other branch of medicine." The revolution in surgery 
and the saving power of anaesthetics, which were the record 
of the years between 1845 ^^^ 1850, can scarcely be over- 
estimated or really understood by those of to-day who share 
the blessings of this life-saving agent. 

So into all departments of life and thought, of endeavor 
and achievement, of government and action, the spirit of 
new methods found entrance in the era of revolution which 
closed the first half of the Nineteenth Century ; and the 
people of the world, though still wanting in real brother- 
hood, and isolated in communities and conscience, were, 
nevertheless, coming nearer and nearer together, as through 
success and failure, through rivalries and conciliations, 
through radicalism and conservatism, they struggled up- 
ward toward the light which in 1850 burned so much clearer, 
brighter, and stronger than in 1800. 

It was James Russell Lowell, a prophetic and truth- 
loving young American poet, who in 1845 sent out a mes- 
sage and a plea to his fellow-men which voiced much of 
this strenuous revolution in manners, methods, and 
morals : — 



" For mankind are one in spirit and an instinct bears along, 
Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or -wrong ; 
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame 
Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;- 
In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal claim. 



HOW THE WORLD HAD ANOTHER SHAKING UP. I97 

New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes ancient good uncouth. 
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth ; 
Lo ! before us gleam her camp-fires 1 We ourselves must Pilgrims be ; 
Launch our Mayflower and steer boldly through the desperate winter 

sea. 
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key." 



" The regenerator of Italy , and one 
of the greatest of modem statesmen, 
Cavoztr led the way in two of the 
most salutary revolutions that have 
taken place hi, the history of the 
world, and deserves to be gratefully 
remembered not only as a true patriot, 
but as one of the benefactors of man- 
hind.''^ 

Thotnas Kirkup. 



THE AGE OF CAVOUR. 

Nationality. 
{1850-1860.) 



COUNT DI CAVOUR 

(Camillo Sensd), 
REGENERATOR OF ITALY, 
Born Turin, Italy, August TO, 1810, 
Died Turin, Italy ,fmie 6, i8bi. 



CHAPTER XII. 

ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 

{From 18^0 to rSjj.) 

THE portal of the Future," as we know it, may well 
be placed at the year 1850. A half-century of 
endeavor had opened up new fields of effort and achieve- 
ment, into which the earnest workers of the world were 
passing through the open door of opportunity. 

Commercial activity and gold-getting are as foremost in 
the vanguard of progress as philanthropy and brotherly 
love ; war has been as great a world-developer as peace ; 
and conquest has borne improvement in its train, even 
though booty and blood made selfishness more odious and 
greed more brutal. We cannot always divorce pain from 
progress. 

Fifty years had made a notable change in the history 
and environment of mankind. The warring elements were 
still unloosed, and the millennium seemed as far away as 
ever ; but " the cross that turns not back " had gone 
steadily forward, and Christianity, the pronounced foe to 
isolation, was still, as in the early day, " a light to lighten 
the Gentiles," as new spheres of energy lay open to the 
hands and feet of men. 

The discovery of gold in California in 1848, and the 
greedy rush that followed that epoch-making event, were 
mighty factors in the development and diffusion of Western 



202 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

civilization. By 1850 one hundred thousand men had 
found their way by the route of the Isthmus of Panama or 
across the plains into that exaggerated El Dorado ; and the 
territorial limit of population was so exceeded that on the 
ninth of September, 1850, California was admitted to 
the Union, — the thirty-first State to be made from the 
great area into which, in less than sixty years, the American 
republic had expanded. 

In India, British possession stretched from the Coro- 
mandel Coast to the Himalayas ; and the queen of England 
ruled, by governors and viceroys, over an area equal in 
extent to all of Europe and a population of more than one 
hundred and ninety million subjects. 

England now had colonial possessions in every part of 
the globe. In Europe, in North and South America, in 
Africa, Asia, Australasia, and Oceanica, she ruled over 
possessions covering eight million square miles and two 
hundred and fifty million inhabitants. France, Spain, Por- 
tugal, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden, also had colonial 
possessions, but their combined possessions, alike in area 
and population, amounted to less than one-fourth of the 
immense holdings of Great Britain, which, in 1850, covered 
one-sixth of the land surface of the globe, and included 
one-sixth of the inhabitants of Earth. 

In this list of foreign land-holders Germany and the 
United States, Russia, Austria, and Italy, of the great 
powers of the world were missing. But in 1850 Germany 
was not yet really Germany ; it was a loosely joined and irre- 
sponsible bunch of kingdoms and principalities and duchies, 
of which Prussia was the largest and most influential ; 
but the princes and powers of Germany had enough to do 



ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 203 

to evolve out of their humiliation at the hands of Napoleon 
the wonderful path to power and nationality which was yet 
before them. Indeed, in the struggle for recognition, even 
Prussia in 1850 was but second best ; for the Deutscher 
Bund, or Germanic Confederation of the forty-seven Ger- 
man independent states that had once comprised the " Holy 
Roman Empire " destroyed by Napoleon, had made an 
Austrian rather than a German prince its head or regent. 
So Germany had neither time nor desire for foreign colo- 
nization; Austria had all it could attend to in keeping in- 
tact the military colonies established on her eastern borders 
as " buffers " to Russia and Turkey ; Russia had her hands 
full with Siberia and her Asiatic boundaries ; and Italy, torn 
by political and papal feuds, and unsuccessful in the Revo- 
lution of 1848, was virtually disunited — a fief of Austria 
and the Pope of Rome, save where, in the fair regions about 
the Lake of Geneva, he who was Duke of Savoy and King 
of Sardinia waited the hour when he could strike once 
again for the liberation of Italy. 

As for the United States, that constantly expanding 
Republic had more than enough territory of its own on 
hand to occupy itself at home without reaching out for 
"foreign" possessions. True, she had. in 18 16, evinced a 
desire to occupy the island of Lampedusa, in the Mediter- 
ranean, said to be the original of Shakspere's island in 
''The Tempest," in order to gain a foothold in Europe; 
but American statesmen saw the wisdom of Napoleon's 
criticism. 

"What fools those Americans are!" said the exiled 
conqueror at Saint Helena. "They, who can do what 
they please in one half of the globe, why should they wish 



204 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

to hold a worthless little island which will certainly em- 
broil them with the European powers." 

So, returning to Washington's farewell advice, the Re- 
public occupied itself with its own vast domain, and colon- 
ized itself at home. For the method in which the United 
States provided for the " continuous western advance of 
new settlements," was, in itself, a pronounced system of 
colonization, — a logical fulfilment of that "unexampled 
energy and capacity for colonization" which has ever 
marked the development of the English-speaking race. 

But while the English-speaking race was cementing its 
nationalities a new era, inspired by this same desire for 
nationality came, in 1850, to the other nations of the 
world. Germany, where, as Balzac observes, "everything 
goes slowly and gravely," was, in spite of Austrian pre- 
dominance, cautiously feeling her way toward this inevi- 
table fact. In 1850 the "League of the Three Kings," 
consisting of Prussia, Saxony, and Hanover, determined to 
act independently of Austria, and called together a national 
parliament at Erfurt. Thereupon Austria protested, and, 
seeking the further humiHation of Prussia, proposed to the 
rulers of Saxony, Wiirtemberg, Bavaria, and Hanover, the 
" League of the Four Kings," which should " crowd out " 
Prussia, and continue Austria in the ascendency. Austria 
won the day, but it was only a temporary victory ; for, out 
of the slow work of conference and diet, the stronger spirit 
of that nationality was born, which, in time, consolidated 
Germany, and made her the mighty power in Europe that 
she is to-day. 

It was in enslaved and divided Italy, however, that the 
spirit of nationality was first to display itself in Continental 



ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 205 

Europe. There, at Turin, in the little court of young 
Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia and Savoy, an energetic 
man of forty was offered and accepted a position in the 
king's cabinet. His name was Camillo Benso di Cavour. 
With his entrance upon the field of Italian politics a new 
era for Italy, and, indeed, for the world, was opened, and 
the age of Cavour, of union and nationality, began. Under 
his cautious but statesman-like lead the kingdom of Sardinia 
rose to a foremost place among the states of Italy ; and 
when, in 1852, he became prime minister of Sardinia, he 
became also virtual ruler of his country, and slowly but 
surely paved the way for the regeneration of Italy and the 
nationality of that race which, in the *' brave days of old," 
had made Rome mistress of the world. 

But the days of 1850 were not those of old Rome. 
Races were consolidating instead of being conquered, and 
whoever tried to be master or mistress could neither play 
the part of Caesar nor fill the role of imperial Rome. 

True, there were those who tried it ; but the Nineteenth 
Century knew but one Napoleon' — and him it overthrew 
and cast aside. 

In France, however, the "nephew of his uncle" essayed 
this dangerous act; the "toadstool" of Victor Hugo's 
simile essayed to play the part of the oak; the "prince- 
president of France," as his Corsican uncle before him had 
been, strove first for the throne of France, and then for 
the dictatorship of Europe and the world ; and while the 
world watched anxiously, and patriots were divided be- 
tween hope and fear, the ancient fable of the ox and the 
frog told by wise old Aesop was once again displayed to 
the world — to end even as did Aesop's fable. 



2o6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

In December, 1848, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was 
elected president of France for four years. 

"Those who accuse me of ambition," he declared, "little 
know my heart." 

In December, 185 i, three years from the day when he 
had sworn to support and defend the repubhc, Louis Napo- 
leon Bonaparte flung aside the constitution he was pledged 
to obey, and by that favorite act of a despot known as a 
coup cCetat — or stroke of state — with the army at his 
back, overthrew the government, trampled on the con- 
stitution, and demanded of the French people his election 
as prince-president for ten years. And the French people, 
terrorized into obedience, elected him ! 

"T will remain chained to the wheel," Louis Napoleon 
Bonaparte grandiloquently announced, " if I cannot prevent 
the ship from drifting to destruction." 

Paris rose in revolt ; but the bayonets of the army 
bloodily quelled the insurrection, and one year later, on 
the eighth of December, 1852, the Senate of France re- 
stored the Empire, and declared the prince-president heredi- 
tary Emperor of France under the title of Napoleon III. 

The toadstool had shot up wondrously ; the frog was 
swelling to great proportions ! 

"Liberty," said the new Emperor, "never helped to 
make a durable political edifice ; it can only crown a political 
edifice which time has consolidated." 

And thus he proposed to consolidate ! 

But, though thus " railroaded " into the supreme control, 
all France did not agree to this "act of the people ;" and 
thoughtful men the world over scarcely echoed the fervid 
words of that over-wrought English poet, Elizabeth Barrett 



ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 20/ 

Browning, who thought she saw in this new Napoleon 
another deliverer of Italy : 

" Emperor, emperor 1 
From the centre to the shore, 
From the Seine back to the Rhine, 
Stood eight milhons up and swore 
By their manhood's right divine 
So to elect and legislate 
This man should renew the line 
Broken in a strain of fate 
And leagued kings at Waterloo 
When the people's hands let go ; 

Emperor 

Evermore." 

In equally fervid language, however, did Victor Hugo, 
the overwrought patriot, protest. 

"What ! " he exclaimed; "is it this Bonaparte who has 
consummated this disaster .'' Is it in the centre of the 
greatest people of the world, in the middle of the greatest 
century of history, that this man has arisen and triumphed ? 
. . . What the lion would not have dared, the ape has 
done ! What the eagle would have feared to seize in his 
talons the parrot has clutched in its claws ! — In one 
single day, between the dark and the dawn, the absurd has 
become possible ; axioms have become chimeras, and every- 
thing that was a lie has become a living fact . . . God 
was marching onward ; and Louis Bonaparte, with plume 
on head, threw himself across the path and said to God 
'Thou shalt go no farther ! ' And God has stopped." 

" But do you imagine that this is so } " he concluded. 
... " You do not hear, in the shadow beyond, that muf- 
fled sound ! You do not hear some one movina: backward 



2o8 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

and forward ! You do not see that the breathing of that 
which is behind makes the canvas tremble ! " 

And time proved that the patriot was more of a prophet 
than the poet. 

But, before that bitter day, the poet's dream was first to 
come true, when the Emperor Napoleon posed as the de- 
liverer of Italy. 

" When a deed is done for freedom," as Lowell says, 
that deed is really an expression of advancing thought. 
Politics and patriotism were not the only factors in the 
triumph of nationality. The explorer and the reformer 
helped on in the development equally with the statesman 
and the soldier. 

In 1850 the explorer was abroad; the reformer was 
pressing for action. Sir John Franklin, the Englishman, 
hunting for that baffling Northwest Passage, had for five 
years been lost in Arctic ice ; and Captain Robert McClure, 
the Irishman, searching for the lost Sir John, discovered, 
on October 26, 1850, from the heights of Point Russell, a 
(if not the) northwest passage, by which one might go from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific. But Sir John Franklin and 
his daring comrades were never found alive. In 1849 
David Livingstone, the intrepid missionary, bearing alike 
the cross and the medicine-chest, penetrated into the un- 
known regions of South Africa, and discovered the lakes 
which are the central drainage-point of that still disputed 
part of the "dark continent." 

Livingstone's brothers of the cross were also enlarging 
the field of missionary endeavor, and, notwithstanding sec- 
tarian differences and denominational jealousies, were doing 
yoeman service for civilization and progress. Undeterred 



ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 209 

by privation or hardship, faithful even in the face of death, 
the true men and women who in the mid-years of the cen- 
tury were going up and down the world in the cause of 
Christian civilization, even though often mistaken in 
methods, tactless in action, and hampered by unworthy 
associates, were alike world-redeeming and epoch-making 
pioneers of progress ; and, as Dr. Maclear well says, " the 
reflex influence of their lives and self-denial has told upon 
the church at home, while, apart from their influence, the 
entire history of important portions of the world's surface 
would have been altered." 

The efforts of these agents of progress were needed ; 
for other agents were also progressing along more sordid 
and selfish lines. All the civilized nations, so-called, were 
knocking at the door of the "uncivilized," seeking, de- 
manding, and often forcing an entrance, in the interest of 
trade and profit. 

Already had England secured a foothold upon the long- 
forbidden land of China. Hong Kong was a regularly 
ceded and occupied English possession ; Canton, Amoy, 
Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai were, by treaty, opened 
to British trade and British consuls. France and the 
United States also secured admittance into certain ports, 
and, gradually, missionaries and merchants found entrance 
into the " Flowery Kingdom." 

But in 1850 the Emperor Taou-Kwang, who was lib- 
eral in his views, and favored the better acquaintance of 
the West and the East, died ; his son, who succeeded, 
him, was rash, narrow-minded, and dissolute, and hated 
Europeans ("Western devils," as he called them) quite 
as heartily as he loved to oppress his people. There- 



2lO THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

upon the people rebelled, and, even as their Western 
brothers had done, demanded relief. In August, 1850, 
this discontent broke into open insurrection ; and a 
wedge of southern provinces of the empire, uniting, under 
a self-raised leader of great ability, Hung-sew-tseuen by 
name, changed insurrection to rebellion, and threatened the 
existence of the long-established Tartar dynasty. 

Hung-sew's followers termed themselves tai-pings, or 
"princes of peace ;" and their leader, having acquired a 
smattering of Christian teaching, promulgated a sort of 
spurious Christianity, and declared himself a heavenly mes- 
senger, sent for the regeneration of China. The people 
flocked to his standard ; almost all of Eastern China fell 
before his victorious advance ; and in 1852, in the captured 
city of Nanking, the Tai-ping chief declared himself Em- 
peror of China, under the title of Teen-wang — the heav- 
enly king. Thus did the half -understood teachings of 
Christian missionaries, and the crude demands of the 
people for independence, learned from foreign contact, 
well-nigh overturn the great conservative empire. For 
fourteen years the Tai-ping rebellion continued, and its 
results did much to bring about the threatened " break 
up ' ' in China at the end of the century. 

In 1853 Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, a vet- 
eran of the naval war of 181 2, with an American squadron 
opened the doors of Japan to civilization and progress. 
For centuries that secluded island empire had held the 
world at bay, refusing alike trade and communication to 
Europe and America. But America believed that the 
time had arrived to, enforce some recognition of com- 
mercial and international rights ; and Commodore Perry, 



ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 211 

armed with a letter from the president of the United 
States, conducted himself in so friendly and diplomatic a 
manner that the barriers of Japanese exclusiveness were 
fairly broken down, and a treaty of commercial alUance was 
concluded between the empire of Japan and the republic of 
the United States. 

Thus, in their several ways, did the Anglo-Saxon race 
open the doors of the Orient, and, in the mid-years of the 
Nineteenth Century, bring about the neighborliness of the 
world. 

But neighbors are not always friendly, and, even in 
families, dissensions and differences appear. 

In the year 1852 three great men died, — Wellington, 
the conqueror of Napoleon, and Webster and Clay, the 
mighty " Unionists " of America. Their deaths ushered 
in a new dispensation. In England, indeed in all Europe, 
militarism, of which Wellington had been the chief expo- 
nent, gave place to popular government, and in America 
concession yielded to the demand for a surer nationality. 

" His voice is silent in your council-hall 
Forever," 

wrote Tennyson, in his magnificent ode on the death of 
the Great Duke, 

" Yet, remember, all, 
He spoke among you, and the Man who spoke ; 
Who never sold the truth, to serve the hour, 
Nor paltered with Eternal God for power; 
Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow 
Through either babbling world of high or low; 
Whose life was work, whose language rife 
With rugged maxims hewn from life ; 
Who never spoke against a foe ; 



212 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke 
All great self-seekers trampling on the right ; 
Truth-teller was our England's AKred named; 
Truth-lover was our English Duke ; 
Whatever record leaps to light 
He never shall be shamed." 



And in America, where, in 1852, Henry Clay, " the great 
pacificator," and Daniel Webster, the "expounder of the 
Constitution," dropped from their exalted places in the 
ranks of the living, their efforts and services for the Union 
they so passionately loved are remembered by the republic 
for whose integrity they labored, and they are accorded 
foremost places in the rank of historic Americans. 

" We may put aside," said (even as I write this chapter 
in my "story") the junior senator from the great State 
which Daniel Webster so nobly represented in his migh- 
tiest days, — " we may put aside all his other achievements, 
all his other claims to remembrance, and inscribe alone 
upon the base of his statue the words uttered in the Sen- 
ate, ' Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and insepa- 
rable.' . . . No other words are wanted for a man who so 
ably represented and so expressed the faith and hopes of 
a nation." 

But, with the deaths of Clay and Webster, the dissen- 
sions in the American family, no longer to be checked by 
pacificator or orator, waxed hotter as the conscience of the 
North and the necessities of the South were drawn into 
insistent antagonism. 

Henry Clay's last act -of pacification was the Compro- 
mise of 1850, which, so people hoped, by a little giving up 
on either side and a little supposed benefit to both sides. 



ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 213 

would bring within the borders of the republic peace and 
good will to men. 

But one of those concessions to the South was the hate- 
ful Fugitive Slave Law. The North was justly indignant 
at this most un-American invasion of its rights and liberties ; 
on the other hand, the South, committed to slavery, with its 
money invested in this human property and dependent upon 
maintaining it, could see only injustice, bigotry, and un- 
friendliness in the growing annimosity of the North. 

In the very year that Henry Clay died, in 1852, Harriet 
Beecher Stowe published "Uncle Tom's Cabin." That 
remarkable and timely book lifted the slavery crusade out 
from the little company of Abolitionist agitators, and made 
it a world-stirring question of humanity and philanthropy ; 
"beyond any other single influence," says Mr. Merriam, 
"it planted in the men and women of the North a deep and 
passionate hostility to human slavery." 

The influence of this book upon the times, as Professor 
Bates says, "can hardly be estimated." It touched not 
only the land of its birth, it went to every land ; ten thou- 
sand copies a day were sold in London ; it was translated 
into twenty-five languages and tongues, and is still, to-day, 
the most widely-read novel in the English language, even 
though the age it helped to create has long since passed, 
and the style of its telling has been superseded by better 
literary art. 

. Literature, indeed, in the opening " fifties " was making 
an imperishable mark upon the world. In 1850 Alfred 
Tennyson published " In Memoriam," of which Dr. Van 
Dyke declares that " it is hardly too much to say that ' In 
Memoriam ' stands out, in present vision, as the most illus- 



214 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

trious poem of the century. Certainly, he adds, " it has 
been the most frequently translated, the most widely 
quoted, and the most deeply loved."- 

To us, who read the steadily progressing story of the 
Nineteenth Century, with al] its strivings toward higher 
endeavor and loftier achievement, this " English classic on 
the love of immortahty and the immortality of love," as it 
has so well been described, contains an even nobler note of 
progress and performance as the poet heard the New Year 
chimes that, from an English church tower, "rang in" the 
year 1850, — the close of our half -century, the opening of 
a new and still more glorious half. Take down your " Ten- 
nyson," and turning to the one hundred and fifth section 
of " In Memorian " read again those noble verses, fitting 
accompaniment for the vigil of every one who in hope and 
trust and faith "sees the New Year in." 

" Ring out a slowly dying cause 

And ancient forms of party strife; 
Ring in the nobler modes of life 
With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease ; 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ; 

Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
Ring in the thousand years of peace." 

There was need for that New Year wish in 1850. The 
old cause of tyranny was indeed slowly dying; the "sweeter 
manners," however, were as slow in coming. But science 
and invention were grappling with the " old shapes of foul 
disease," even while the " narrowing lust of gold " was 
seeking out the newly occupied quarters of the globe, and 
the " thousand years of peace " seemed scarcely yet ready 
to begin. 



ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 21 5 

But the " neighbor liness of the world " of which I have 
spoken was already beginning to display itself. In 185 1 
there was opened in London, or rather in what was then 
its "marvellous Crystal Palace," the International Exhibi- 
tion of 185 1. " Not merely national in its scope and bene- 
fits," so said Prince Albert, the truly "princely" husband 
of Queen Victoria, " but comprehensive of the whole 
world." 

There had been Industrial Exhibitions before that half- 
century year. The French had inaugurated the idea, and 
had, before 185 1, held at least eleven such expositions, 
between 1798 and 1849. But these were national rather 
than international. The exhibition of 185 1 was the first 
to bring together in the peaceful rivalry of "show" the 
products and manufactures of the world. 

A great building of glass and iron — hence called the 
"Crystal Palace " — was erected in Hyde Park, two miles 
from the heart of the city ; eighteen acres were set aside 
for the display ; and the exhibition building, covering a space 
of a million square feet, was divided into four great depart- 
ments — raw material, machinery, manufactures, and fine 
arts. One-half of the space was given to England and her 
colonies, and one-half to foreign countries. The value of 
the goods exhibited exceeded eight million dollars ; and the 
famous exhibition was opened by Queen Victoria on the 
first of May, 1851, closing on the eleventh of October of 
the same year. It was a noble enterprise ; and its success 
led to similar attempts by other great nations of the world, 
notably France, Austria, and the United States, gradually 
growing in extent, magnificence, and value, as a commer- 
cial and peaceful educator, until they culminated in the 



2l6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

great Paris Exhibition of 1900, which came as the fitting 
consummation of the genius, progress, and achievement of 
the Nineteenth Century. 

But the friendly rivalries of production did not soften 
the sterner rivalries of power. In Eastern Europe an 
"inevitable conflict" was preparing, where Turkey, the 
" sick man of the East," obstructed the pathway of 
Russian expansion. 

For centuries Russia had looked forward to the posses- 
sion of Constantinople and the sea-coast of Turkey ; noth- 
ing but the jealous watchfulness of Western Europe has 
prevented this absorption of a ruined and wasted portion of 
one of the earth's fairest regions ; the " balance of power " 
— that vague and useless principle of European arrange- 
ment, to which England was so long pledged, and for which 
it has so often fought — decreed that a weak power rather 
than a strong one should control the eastern shores of the 
Mediterranean ; and Turkey was maintained in her "lordly 
heritage," which, by neglect, despotism, and brutality, she 
reduced to stagnation and decay — a Nineteenth Century 
anomaly. The position of Turkey in this age of progress 
is one of the few remaining relics of that age of Militarism, 
fitly dominated by Wellington, the soldier, who stoutly 
maintained that Turkey must be kept as a weak and 
"assisted " nation in order to sustain the balance of power 
in Europe. 

Into this condition of affairs came the new Emperor of 
France — the third Napoleon, sometimes called the Little. 
He declared that the Roman Catholic pilgrims to the birth- 
place of Christ should have a key to the chief door of the 
church of Bethlehem just as the Greek Christians had. 



ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 21/ 

Now, Bethlehem, as did all Palestine, belonged to the 
Sultan of Turkey ; the Emperor of Russia was a Greek 
Christian ; but when Napoleon insisted on what he termed 
the rights of his church, the Sultan, sorely pressed, said he 
should have the key. In February, 1853, the key was 
given, whereupon the Czar Nicholas said the rights of the 
Greek Church had been invaded, and insisted that the 
Christian population of Turkey should be placed under his 
guardianship and protection. 

This would have been giving Russia the footing she 
desired in Turkey. The Sultan sought the advice of Eng- 
land, France, Austria, and Prussia ; they told the Turkish 
despot to tell the Russian despot to mind his own business. 
This refusal made the Czar angry ; and he at once marched 
an army — not into Palestine, but into the Turkish prov- 
inces along the Danube, " to insure the restoration of our 
rights," that is, the sole possession of the key to the great 
front door of the Church at Bethlehem. 

Then Turkey declared war against Russia. England, 
fearful lest the success of Russia should lead to the occu- 
pation and control of the eastern Mediterranean, — her 
way to India, — protested, and secretly encouraged Turkey. 
Napoleon, welcoming the opportunity to prove his rights 
to his name, and to avenge the disgrace of the retreat 
from Moscow, openly encouraged the Turks. The old- 
time foemen and rivals, England and France, allied them- 
selves to save Turkey for Europe ; and when, in Novem- 
ber, 1853, a Russian fleet destroyed a Turkish fleet in the 
Black Sea, France and England declared that it was hostile 
to the peace of Europe for a Russian warship to sail the 
Black Sea, and sent their own warships through the Bosporus 



2l8 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

into the Black Sea, made an alliance with Turkey, and on 
the twenty-eighth of March, 1854, declared war against 
Russia. Once more there was strife in Europe. 

To this conflict has been given the name of the Crimean 
War, because the chief stronghold of Russia on the Black 
Sea was at the port of Sebastopol on the Russian penin- 
sula known as the Crimea. 

Armies were despatched to this point ; the French and 
English marched side by side ; and had there been abso- 
lute agreement between the leaders, Sebastopol would 
have speedily been won. But there were delays which 
enabled the Russians to strengthen their defences and 
increase their army ; and the famous siege of Sebastopol 
began. Great battles accompanied this siege. Alma was 
fought, and the allies won ; Balaklava was fought, and 
the allies won ; Inkerman was fought, and the allies won. 
But still Sebastopol held out, ably defended by Todleben, 
the only great soldier of the bloody Crimean War. 

And at Balaklava, on the twenty-jfifth of October, 1854, 
occurred that miserable mistake in orders by which " the 
noble six hundred " rode to death and fame in the ever- 
glorious cavalry " Charge of the Light Brigade," which 
Tennyson has made immortal : — 

" ' Forward I the Light Brigade 1 ' 
Was there a man dismayed ? 
Not though the soldier knew 

Some one had blundered. 
Theirs not to make reply, 
Theirs not to reason why, 
Theirs but to do and die, 
Into the Valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred." 



ON THE PORTAL OF THE FUTURE. 219 

So 1855 came around with the world at war again; 
but, out of it, with misery came heroism ; with resistance 
came regeneration ; with horror came courtesies and ame- 
lioration ; for the Crimean War was responsible for Florence 
Nightingale, whose unselfish devotion knew neither friend 
nor foe ; whose shadow on the wall the grateful soldiers 
would kiss even in their suffering ; and whose efforts revo- 
lutionized the horrors of military hospitals, and led to the 
Red Cross service of this gentler day of " malice toward 
none and charity to all." 

The Crimean War led, also, in December, 1854, to a 
stronger alliance between the western powers of Europe, 
and brought to the front, as the representative of the little 
kingdom of Sardinia, the great man of the age, the leader 
in the struggle for nationality, Camillo, Count di Cavour, 
prime minister of Victor Emmanuel, and regenerator of 
Italy. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 

{From i8jj to i860.) 

THE year 1855 opened with cold and sickness in the 
camp of the aUies, and with the twin towers of the 
Malakoff and the Redan still standing impregnable above 
the defences of Sebastopol. 

Thus stood, too, throughout the world, in that year of 
1855, other twin towers, seemingly impregnable, relics of 
the days of barbarism and despotism. Even, as in Egypt 
and the East, the stick-plough and the shadoof of Abraham's 
time were still used in farming, so, in civilized lands, cer- 
tain institutions of the days of patriarchial barbarism still 
survived, unmolested. 

There was slavery in progressive America, and serfdom 
in veneered Russia ; labor was still disenfranchised in phil- 
anthropic England, and popular rights were disregarded in 
revolutionary France ; absolutism still held sway in liberal 
Germany, and Austria's clutch still lay stern and unyield- 
ing upon the throat of trampled Italy ; intemperance and 
pauperism still walked hand in hand throughout the world, 
and all alliances for mutual protection and mutual benefit 
seemed alike powerless to resist and impotent to reform. 

Gradually, however, the trenches of the allies drew 
closer and closer to the Russian works ; disease and in- 
competency, to be sure, wasted the allied ranks, but they 




TYPES OF THE ) Thiers 



Napoleon III 
A/-C- r^c' r-A\r/-^iTT^ I Mrs. Stowe Victoria 

AGE OF CAVOUR ) Cavour Tennyson 



HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 221 

never relaxed their stubborn grip upon besieged Sebastopol. 
Austria, fearful for its eastern boundaries, joined the alli- 
ance against Russia ; and the Count Cavour, with the for- 
tunes of Italy in his hands, boldly and shrewdly pledged 
the little kingdom of Sardinia to the same alliance, and 
secured for himself the friendship of England and France, 
so necessary to his patriotic plans. 

In September, 1855, the twin towers of the Malakoff 
and the Redan fell before the allied assaults ; Sebastopol 
was evacuated, and the Crimea lay at the mercy of the 
allies. Crushed by the weight of his disasters and the 
failure of his plans, the Czar Nicholas died of a broken 
heart — and the stubborn cause of despotism seemingly 
died with him. The defeat of Russia in the Crimean War 
was her salvation rather than her disgrace. The new 
Czar, Alexander II., making a virtue of necessity, accepted 
proposals of peace, and the war came to an end by the 
treaty of Paris on the twenty-fifth of February, 1856. 
Thus was Russia, at an enormous cost of life and treasure 
to Eastern and Western Europe, prevented from deciding 
the fate of Turkey ; the " sick man," upheld by Western 
bayonets, still sat at the gateway to the East, a disgrace 
to civilization, and the "Eastern question" was far from 
settled. England, through her " unpreparedness " and 
blunders, lost a certain amount of military prestige. 
France, to satisfy the ambitions of her Emperor, had 
accomplished little except to annoy Prussia, irritate Aus- 
tria, and dissatisfy England, in a war which had not been 
brilliant, and which, at an enormous cost, had accomplished 
little for France. Out of it all one man, only, came forth 
as victor — the Count Cavour. 



222 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

This shrewd and far-seeing statesman had accomplished 
his purpose ; he had forced the great powers of Europe to 
recognize and include Sardinia as a " power ; " he had 
aroused the interest of Europe by the courage of the Sar- 
dinians in the battle of the Tchernaya ; and, admitted to the 
Congress at Paris, he had presented the grievances of 
Italy so strongly that both England and France were 
forced to acknowledge the justice of his cause ; and Italy 
suddenly awoke to the fact that she " had found a man " 
— a statesman who, as Mr. Kirkup declares, was " capable 
of commanding at once the confidence of Italy and the 
respect of Europe." 

As to the "key to the front door " of the birthplace of 
Christ at Bethlehem, which had unlocked the temple of 
war, I cannot find that its ownership was decided by 
the treaty of Paris ; but as to-day the great fortress-like 
Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem seems to be the 
joint property of the Greek, Latin, and Armenian Chris- 
tians, it is possible that the saintly usurper Napoleon III. 
had his way. 

He had his way for a while in other things. Because 
Austria seemed for the time the better ally to "tie to," 
Great Britain appeared to be more friendly to Austria than 
to France ; and Cavour was determined to defy Austria. 
So the great Italian turned to France. 

He found Louis Napoleon ready to listen and advise ; 
when the time came for action, the wily Emperor of the 
French was ready also to act. He was constantly, as 
Madame Mohl declared, " attempting little eri^zz/i- d'etat;'' 
and this time he was ready to try one both on Austria and 
Italy ! 



HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 223 

Cavour, knowing how much Italian nationaHty depended 
upon his shrewdness, "made up " to the Emperor Napoleon ; 
for he knew that he must have the help of one of the great 
powers if he wished successfully to defy Austria. So, 
while seeking the sympathy of England, he strove for the 
open assistance of France ; he knew that Russia, because 
of the Crimean War, was jealous and suspicious of Austria ; 
that Prussia was trying to overcome the influence of Aus- 
tria in the German states, and that Hungary, never for- 
getting its humiliation, was discontented and restless. He 
had secured the aid of France ; if he could also make 
friends for Sardinia of all the rivals of Austria, and could 
get the good will of England, his success seemed assured. 

The Sardinian army had made a good record in the Cri- 
mean War ; Cavour strengthened and improved it ; and 
Austria, seeing that the army was altogether too large for 
so small a kingdom as Sardinia, grew uneasy and protested. 
Thereupon Cavour pushed his plans ; and by a tempting 
offer of new territory for France, even the king Victor 
Emmanuel's own homeland of Savoy, he drew the willing- 
Napoleon into his scheme ; and at Plombieres, a watering- 
place in southern France, in the fall of 1858, he so worked 
with the Emperor Napoleon, that an alliance against 
Austria was agreed upon. 

On New Year's Day, 1859, the Emperor Napoleon HI. 
sprung his little mine on Austria. He followed the ex- 
ample of his famous uncle, in 1803, and openly insulted 
the Austrian ambassador at a public reception, just as the 
greater Napoleon had served the English ambassador, and 
for the same purpose — war. 

War came speedily. On the twenty-third of April, 



224 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

1859, Austria demanded the immediate disarmament of 
the Sardinian forces; and this, of course, being refused, 
within three days the Austrian army crossed the Ticino 
into Sardinian territory. At once Napoleon declared war 
on Austria, proclaiming it as his purpose to expel Austria 
from Italy. King Victor Emmanuel, in the Sardinian 
parliament, said, "We are not insensible to the cry of 
suffering that rises to us from so many parts of Italy ; " 
and the purpose of Cavour to liberate and regenerate 
Italy seemed near to accomplishment. 

The world thrilled at this new blow for liberty ; and, as 
it heard Napoleon's declaration that he would make Italy 
free from the Alps to the Apennines, the world believed 
him ; for the fox wore the lion's skin just then, and the 
world really believed him to be a lion. 

He came into Italy as commander-in-chief ; King Victor 
Emmanuel, the real soldier, served as his second ; and the 
allied forces of France and Italy flung themselves on the 
Austrians, and defeated them at Montebello, and Magenta, 
and Solferino ; the puppet princes, set up by Austria, fled 
for their Hves ; Venice was threatened ; Northern Italy 
was freed from the Austrian yoke; and when, on the 
eighth of June, 1859, Napoleon III. and Victor Emmanuel 
rode into Milan at the head of a conquering army, and 
Lombardy was declared annexed to Sardinia — or the 
kingdom of Savoy, as it was sometimes called — the 
lovers of hberty and progress flung their caps in the air, 
and the most of them, at that moment, echoed Mrs. 
Browning's praises: 

" Shout for France and Savoy ! 
Shout for the helper and doer; 



HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 225 

Shout for the good sword's ring, 
Shout for the thought still truer. 
Shout for the spirits at large 
Who passed for the dead this spring, 
Whose living glory is sure. 
Shout for France and Savoy 1 
Shout for the council and charge 1 
Shout for the head of Cavour; 
And shout for the heart of a King, 
That's great with a nation's joy, 
Shout for France and Savoy 1 



Ay, it is He 
Who rides at the King's right hand 1 
Leave room for his horse and draw to the side. 
Nor press too near in the ecstasy 
Of a newly-delivered, impassioned land. 

He is moved, you see. 
He, who has done it all ! 
They call it a cold, stern face, 

But this is Italy 
Who rises in her place — 
For this he fought in his youth. 
Of this he dreamed in the past. 
The lines of the resolute mouth 
Tremble a little at last. 
Cry, he has done it all ! 

Emperor 

Evermore." 

Yet this was the man — "he who had done it all " — 
who, after the welcoming plaudits of Milan and the triumph 
of Solferino — in which, however, so even French histo- 
rians to-day declare, " the command-in-chief was below the 
proper level " — this was the man who, two weeks after 
Solferino, without a word to his trusting ally of Sardinia, 
or his superior in statecraft, Cavour, secretly met the Em- 
peror Francis Joseph of Austria, at Villa Franca, near 



226 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Verona, and there signed a treaty of peace that set the 
world a-wondering and enraged the patriots of Italy, It 
was another of Napoleon's little coiips d'etat. And where 
was Italy ? 

The peace of Villa Franca stopped the triumphant course 
of Italian independence, gave only Lombardy to Victor 
Emmanuel (and that not directly, but as a gift through 
Napoleon), made the Pope of Rome head of an Italian 
confederation which left out Southern Italy, and gave 
back to the puppets of Austria two of their richest 
provinces. 

Austria was, of course, humiliated by this treaty, but 
only in a trifling way ; Italy and Victor Emmanuel were 
even more bitterly humiliated ; even France was not satis- 
fied with its Emperor's actions ; and when the Italian 
provinces of Nice and Savoy were practically seized by 
France, the Italian patriots were roused to a hot indigna- 
tion against their "deliverer," and Garibaldi, the radical 
revolutionist, took the field. 

Cavour refused to sign the treaty, and resigned as prime 
minister ; but when he saw that, even with all this disap- 
pointment, Italy had really been the gainer, that the power 
of Austria in the peninsula was really broken, and that he 
could still hold in his grasp the destiny of Italy, he returned 
to his post, and again took up his life-work — the liberation 
and unity of all Italy. 

The world was puzzled at the new move of the sphinx- 
like Emperor of the French at Villa Franca : he liked to 
be called " the sphinx," he was always so mysterious. 

Palmerston, the prime minister of England, did not be- 
lieve in Napoleon's Italian plans, and openly said so. 



HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 22/ 

" The emperor's mind is as full of schemes," he said, 
"as a warren is full of rabbits; but his plans will never 
satisfy the reasonable wishes of the Italian people." 

The rest of the civilized world felt so too ; and from 
America, after the baffling peace of Villa Franca, came 
this warning plea for patience from that wise young 
prophet, Lowell : 

" Wait a little; do we not wait 1 
Louis Napoleon is not Fate ; 
Francis Joseph is not Time ; 
There's One hath swifter feet than Crime. 



Wait, we say : our years are long ; 

Men are weak, but Man is strong ; 

Since the stars first curved their rings 

We have looked on many things, 

Great wars come and great wars go, 

Wolf-tracks hght on polar snow ; 

We shall see him come and gone, 

This second-hand Napoleon. 
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin 1 
Lachesis, twist 1 and Atropos, sever I 
In the shadow, year out, year in, 
The silent headsman waits forever." 

" Do we not wait ? " asked the prophet -poet in America 
of impatient Europe. 

We had waited long in America, as through the years 
the cause of freedom halted just short of fulfilment. 
Nearer and nearer drew the two opposing ideas which for 
years, honestly believed in and honestly upheld, had lived 
under the shelter of the stars and stripes — liberty and 
slavery. More and more strenuously as the people saw 
both justice and strength in the demand of the North, 



228 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

was the limiting of slavery demanded. " No more slave 
States ! " was the cry. 

In 1856 the question came to a crisis over the partition 
of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska as material for 
new States in the Federal Union. Should those new States 
be opened to slavery or not .? was the query to be ans- 
wered. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed by Congress 
in 1854, left it to the people of the two territories to 
decide the question for themselves. 

At once the pro-slavery and anti-slavery men made 
desperate efforts to gain control ; and emigration, especially 
into Kansas, which was the section most in dispute, led to 
an open contest that became almost a border war. After 
three years of this political and civil strife, however, the 
party of freedom won, and in 1 86 1 Kansas was admitted 
to the Union as a free State. 

But before that day came, the results of the struggle 
had been something more than the question of freedom or 
slavery in Kansas. Compromise was broken down, politi- 
cal attitudes changed, and the national government was 
forced either to forbid or foster slavery. It could not be 
left as a question for individual States to consider and 
decide. 

Upon the complexion of the next administration, the 
settlement of this matter largely hung. Italy and Ger- 
many were fighting out the question, each in its own 
peculiar way. The republic of the United States must do 
the same — State Sovereignty or Nationality, which should 
it be ? 

The man who declared, " This government cannot endure 
permanently half slave and half free ; " the man who said, 



HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 229 

'•I do not expect the house to fall, but I expect it will 
cease to be divided " — Abraham Lincoln of Illinois — 
God's especial instrument for wisdom of choice and Amer- 
ican nationality, was elected president, and the inevitable 
conflict assumed a new and sterner stage. 

This choice and election were not brought about without 
disturbances and upheavals. Honest in their .belief that 
slavery was not only right but necessary, the power in the 
Southern States, aided and abetted by sympathizers and 
supporters in the North, stubbornly and arrogantly com- 
bated the "awakening of the Northern conscience." 
Feud and fanaticism, riot and mob, vindictiveness and 
vituperation, hot heads on both sides, and the peace-at-any- 
price man between — all these increased and exaggerated 
the growing quarrel, which neither calm counsel nor con- 
servative compromise could longer restrain or settle. 

There is such a thing as nationalism of thought, where 
the best utterances and the best achievements of men 
unite all thinkers in a union of intellectual interest. There 
is no sectionalism in the "republic of letters." How 
much this diffusion of the best thought of the world 
helped toward the progress of nationality and the coming 
of freedom, it may be hard to say ; but certainly the de- 
cade between 1850 and i860 was the era of the highest 
productive thought yet reached in the world. 

German scholarship was teaching England and America 
to think rationally and not to accept blindly ; Hegel and 
Kant and Schelling, pioneers of progress in the early years 
of the century, were interpreted to the widely-growing 
class of readers and thinkers ; Goethe and Schiller, Fichte 
and Jean Paul, Madame de Stael and Rousseau, were widely 



230 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 

read in other than their own lands, and freedom of thought 
led to freedom of action. "The old is for slaves," declared 
Emerson, the American ; and while those who, as in every 
age, think the new of little value, and bemoan the fact that 
there are none to compare with the giants of the past, the 
young men of the present, upon whom all real advance 
always depends, were appreciating the fact that there are 
always giants in the "new dispensation." Certainly those 
years between 1850 and i860 were the high-water mark of 
intellectual activity. Then Dickens and Thackeray, Car- 
lyle and Ruskin, the Brownings and Tennyson, Trollope 
and Reade, Macaulay and Kingsley, were doing their best 
work in England. Darwin published his " Origin of Spe- 
cies " in 1859. Herbert Spencer began his great work in 
psychology and philosophy, and John Stuart Mill was 
emancipating philosophy from pedantry. Germany was 
prolific of great students, philosophers, scientists, and story- 
tellers, — Ranke and Mommsen, Curtius and Sybel, in his- 
tory ; Fischer and Ueberweg in philosophy ; Llibke in art ; 
Schmidt and Hettner in literary studies ; Strauss in theol- 
ogy ; Liebig and Virchow, Biichner and-Helmholtz, in phys- 
iology and physics ; Freytag and Rueter in story-telling ; 
while Wagner, unsuccessfully attempting his new departure 
in music, was already preparing the way for what was after- 
ward accepted as " the music of the future." These all 
were doing brilliant work in Germany in 1859 ; while in 
France, Balzac, though dead, and Victor Hugo, though in 
exile, were still the literary giants, with the two Dumas, 
father and son, Gautier, Flaubert and George Sand, Sainte- 
Bueve and Taine, Guizot and Thiers and Michelet — names 
to add lustre and glory to the literary achievements of 



HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 23 1 

France in poetry, fiction, and history, even as Cousin and 
Comte in philosophy, De Tocqueville, who left his work 
unfinished, and Renan, who was just commencing, Simon 
and De Remusat in philosophy and politics, with other stu- 
dents of wisdom and power, made the second empire rich 
in productive labors. In Russia, Turgenieff was the most 
prominent man of letters, as he was also the greatest of 
Russian novelists until overshadowed by the greater glory 
of Tolstoi ; while across the sea in America, names dear to 
all lovers of English speech were holding the attention and 
the admiration of men and women, - — Longfellow and 
Whittier, Holmes and Lowell, Bancroft and Motley and 
Prescott, Emerson and Margaret Fuller and Curtis, Haw- 
thorne the great story-teller, Ik Marvel and Dr. Holland, 
and others of lesser brilliancy but of equal temporary fame ; 
while Thoreau and Whitman, then unappreciated, were 
doing work which the future was to hail as great and en- 
shrine as immortal. 

Surely it was a wonderful ten years — that decade be- 
fore i860. It was great in other fields of effort and 
production. In 1855 Bessemer, the English engineer, dis- 
covered and perfected the modern method of making steel ; 
and that same year the great cataract of Niagara was 
spanned by its first suspension-bridge ; in 1857 and again 
in 1858 the union of America and Europe by a submarine 
telegraph cable beneath the Atlantic Ocean was attempted, 
and on the twentieth of August, 1858, messages of congrat- 
ulation actually passed between the queen of England and 
the president of the United States ; but " some one had 
blundered " in the proper insulation of the wire, and the 
power of transmission gave out. In that same year of 



232 THE STORY- OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

1858 the mightiest of modern steamships, up to that time, 
was launched — the Great Eastern ; and Sartorius advo- 
cated the idea of introducing steam into war-vessels. In 

1859 the Social Science Association, for the study of new 
economic, social, and political questions, was founded ; and 
the great railroad tunnel through Mount Cenis, to connect 
France and Italy, was begun ; Dr. Livingstone, at the head 
of an exploring expedition, was penetrating the mysteries 
of Central Africa ; the Victoria Bridge at Montreal was 
opened in 1859. 

And John Brown, hung on the second of December, 
1859, foi' " invading the State of Virginia " at the head of an 
armed insurrection, . expiated a criminal blunder of con- 
science by a heroic death, and stepped into the immortality 
of a questionable martyrdom. 

But John Brown's servile insurrection was not the only 
disturbance of that nature that distressed the world. Far 
across the sea, in the ''expanded " sections of British India, 
a stupid blunder of English military red tape set the fires 
of rebellion aflame. The Hindoos of India, sprung from 
the Mussulman conquest of Asia, had the Mohammedan's 
religious scruples against pork. Certain of these had be- 
come soldiers in the British army's "native contingent," 
known as Sepoys ; but they were horrified and enraged 
when ordered to bite the cartridges, greased with ham fat, 
which were served out with the new Enfield rifle. As 
soon as possible the British military authorities did away 
with this offending method, but all too late ; their " fore- 
thought came afterward;" the harm had been done ; the 
caste-crushed, creed-bound Sepoy lost confidence in his 
British commander and overlords ; a frenzy of religious 



HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 233 

fanaticism swept the native soldiers into revolt ; and Nana 
Sahib, a dethroned Indian prince and pensioner of England, 
raised the standard of rebellion ; hostile chiefs joined him ; 
the Sepoys at Meerut and Delhi and Cawnpore mutinied 
against their officers, and with savage cruelties massacred 
the men, Vv^omen, and children of the hated blood of Europe. 
The horrors of the Sepoy mutiny are among the dark 
spots of the Nineteenth Century's story. All Central India 
was in revolt ; and Nana Sahib, attempting to set up a 
native government, was unable to command the storm he 
had raised. Gradually, however, British pluck and bravery 
triumphed ; the hastily collected British troops, led by the 
brave General Havelock, were everywhere victorious ; the 
mutiny was crushed out by vigorous and sometimes brutal 
measures ; and British dominion, which had at first been 
shaken almost to its very foundations by this unexpected 
revolt, was at last re-established. But the massacre at 
Cawnpore, the relief of Lucknow, and the siege of Delhi 
were three ever memorable happenings of this terrible 
mutiny ; while the story of Jessie Brown and the '' Pipes of 
Lucknovv' " — 

" Oh 1 dinna ye hear the slogan far away?" 

has outlived even the gallant deeds of Havelock and the 
unshaken loyalty of the Sikhs. 

The spirit of true patriotism that was cementing the 
Christians of the West into sure nationalities was alto- 
gether lacking in the pagan East. Class and caste, which 
provoked the Sepoy mutiny, were the very things that 
condemned it to failure. Indeed, as Professor Seeley says, 
" the mutiny was in great measure put down by turning 



234 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

the races of India against each other ; " and it is by making 
India EngHsh rather than keeping it Indian that Great 
Britain has strengthened and preserved her mighty power 
in Asia. 

So, throughout the world, the decade of 1850 to i860, 
which may justly be called the age of Cavour, or the era 
of nationality, was, even by its mistakes and failures, as by 
its successes, putting the despots down and exalting the 
nation-builders. For the failure of the Sepoy mutiny was 
the very best thing for modern India, released by British 
unity from the days of feud and despotism ; and the failure 
of John Brown strengthened both sides of the American 
contestants for the conflict that was now seen to be inevi- 
table. The efforts of Cavour and Victor Emmanuel and 
Garibaldi in Italy inspired the world to equal efforts in 
unity and patriotism; and the Russian overthrow in Sebas- 
topol had cemented that great nation into nobler endeavor, 
and aroused in the new Czar the desire to help rather than 
hinder his subjects by making them men instead of keeping 
them slaves. 

Those historic ten years were, therefore, forward-look- 
ing, forward-moving days. The thought of the world was 
broadening with its desires — perhaps because of them ; 
and an age that could create a Cavour, and bring forward 
a Lincoln, was doing mighty service for mankind and for 
all time. The age that could produce in one language 
alone, as did those then years, Macaulay's "England," 
Thackeray's "Pendennis," "Esmond," "New comes," and 
" Virginians," Dickens's " David Copperfield," Carlyle's 
"Frederick the Great," Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's 
Cabin," Bulwer Lytton's "My Novel," George Sands's 



HOW ONE MAN LIBERATED A NATION. 235 

" Life," Tennyson's " In Memoriam," Max Miiller's " Com- 
parative Mythology," Buckle's '' History of Civilization," 
George Eliot's ''Adam Bede," Darwin's " Origin of Spe- 
cies," Emerson's " Representative Men," Hawthorne's 
"Scarlet Letter," Longfellow's "Hiawatha," and Holmes's 
"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," with other equally 
great though perhaps less popular books ; which could 
open Japan to commerce, probe the mysteries of darkest 
Africa, withstand the shock of savage rebellion in Asia, 
and pave the way for nationality and liberty in Europe and 
America ; which could attempt an Atlantic cable, open 
Parliament to the Jews, bring the world together in a great 
international exhibition, and range itself openly against 
oppression, bigotry, despotism, and greed — such an age as 
that had surely made for itself an imperishable record. 



" He carried the sorrozvs of his country 
as truly as he bore its bur dens ; andwhen 
he came to speak on the second immortal 
day at Gettysburg, he condensed into a 
few sentences the innermost meaning- of 
the struggle and the victory in the life of 
the nation." 

Hamilton Wright Mabie. 



THE AGE OF LINCOLN. 

Freedom. 

(1860-1870.) 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

THE EMANCIPATOR, 

Born NolhCs Creek, Kentucky, Feb. i2, 18 

Died JVashington, D.C., April 13, i86j. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 
(From i860 to i86j.) 

IN the very month, May, i860, in which Garibaldi, the 
Italian patriot, wrested Sicily from the control of Aus- 
tria, and entered Palermo as a conqueror, Abraham Lincoln, 
the man of the people, was nominated for president of the 
United States. That month was the opening of a new era 
for the world — the era of freedom — the age of Lincoln. 

In that same year John Stuart Mill, the Englishman, 
published his famous essay " On Liberty." The three 
men may be said to represent the three phases or degrees 
of real freedom. For Garibaldi v/as a patriot by revolu- 
tion ; Mill was a patriot by theory ; Lincoln was a patriot 
by a stern but loving conservatism. And, of those three 
phases, the noble conservatism of Lincoln — which was 
based on his immortal words : " with malice toward none, 
with charity for all ; with firmness in the right as God 
gives us to see the right" — has best stood the test of 
time, and has been the keynote to the world's truest and 
surest progress. 

Accepting things as they were, not sulking because they 
were not as he wished to have them, Cavour returned to 
his post, and in January, 1 860, took his seat as president 
of the council in the new kingdom of Sardinia. That 
kingdom embraced, when he returned to office, Lombardy 

239 



240 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



.^ 



and the original territory of the kingdom of Sardinia and 
Savoy. But to bring about release from Austria, Cavour 
had been compelled to pledge to Napoleon III., for French 
assistance, his own home province of Savoy, and the ad- 
joining one of Nice, the birthplace of Garibaldi. That was 
Louis Napoleon's love for Italian freedom ! 

This sacrifice, made by the house of Savoy to the Italian 
cause, raised a storm of indignation against Cavour; but 
he was wiser than his critics ; he knew what concessions 
to the cause of independence were necessary, and he made 
them. Victor Emmanuel said nothing when he saw the 
cradle of his race sacrificed on the altar of unity ; but Gari- 
baldi, with the hot blood of all revolutionists, declared 
that Cavour "has made me a foreigner in my own house," 
and betook himself to the south where, at the head of a 
thousand "soldiers of liberty," he raised the standard of 
revolution in Southern Italy with the rallying cry " Italy 
and Victor Emmanuel ! " 

It proved a trumpet-call. Volunteers flocked to his 
standard. Sicily was speedily won. On the twenty-sev- 
enth of May the red-shirted liberator entered Palermo ; 
then, crossing to Naples, he drove out the Bourbon king, 
who was at once a despot and a coward, entered Naples 
in triumph, defeated and scattered the king's army, and 
proclaimed himself, in the name of Victor Emmanuel, 
dictator of the Two Sicilies. Mazzini, his brother revolu- 
tionist, joined him, and together they tried to rule the 
kingdom they had won ; but neither of them had capacity 
for administration ; few real revolutionists have — from 
Sam Adams to Aguinaldo. Garibaldi, brave as a lion in 
battle, was not a statesman ; and he and Mazzini had sev- 



HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 24 1 

eral schemes in mind — among others the proclamation of 
a repubhc, and the overthrow of the Papal power at Rome. 

Trouble seemed brewing; the Sicilies, freed from the 
Bourbons, were discontented with results, and anarchy was 
threatened. Then Cavour acted. 

" Garibaldi wishes to perpetuate the revolution," he said. 
"We wish to terminate it." 

While the revolution in Naples was in progress, Cavour 
had been busy at nation-making in the north. Northern 
Italy, between the Po and Tuscany, joined the new king- 
dom on March 14, i860; two days later Tuscany was 
annexed by popular vote ; and when the great statesman 
saw that Garibaldi's unsupported design on Rome might 
endanger the Italian cause, and set Europe against him, he 
advocated the same measure himself; and, with the sanction 
of Napoleon — for he was shrewd enough to still keep 
friends with France — he sent a Sardinian army to invade 
the domains of the Pope "for the unification of Italy." 
King Victor Emmanuel followed with re-enforcements, 
crossed the Apennines, and effected a union with Garibaldi, 
coming from the south. The temporal dependencies of 
the Pope revolted in favor of Italian unity. Garibaldi 
hailed Victor Emmanuel as King of Italy, resigned his dic- 
tatorship of Naples, and retired to his island home of 
Caprera. Then Sicily and Naples voted for annexation ; 
Victor Emmanuel entered the latter capital in triumph in 
November, and Cavour said exultantly, " We are Italy ; we 
work in her name." 

There was no repressing the triumphant spirit of nation- 
ality ; from the Alps to the Apennines, in spite of Napo- 
leon's backsliding, Italy was free ; and on the eighteenth 



242 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

of February, 1861, the first Italian parliament met at Turin, 
and Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed king of Italy. 

Cavour's great work was done. The dream of his youth 
was realized. ^' A new Italy," says Mr. Kirkup, " had 
sprung from the ashes of the old, an Italy of representative 
government and of enlightened progress, the mistress of 
her own destinies, and a worthy member of the common- 
wealth of nations." Then the terrible strain of years of 
thought and effort told on the great statesman ; the reac- 
tion came; and on the sixth of June, 1861, he died, still 
talking of Italy, and saying, "A free church in a free 
state ! " — his life-long idea of freedom. 

" We came home in a cloud here," runs the last letter 
ever written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the English- 
Itahan patriot. "I can scarcely command voice or hand 
to name Cavour. That great soul which meditated and 
made Italy has gone to the divine Country. If tears or 
blood could have saved him to us, he should have had 
mine. I feel yet as if I could scarcely comprehend the 
greatness of the vacancy. A hundred Garibaldi's for such 
a man." 

And at Florence, three weeks after, she too, died, over- 
come, it is now asserted, by grief at the death of Cavour, so 
dear to her was Italy free, so great the man who had ac- 
complished this freedom. 

" A hundred Garibaldis for such a man ! " and yet it is 
Garibaldi, the revolutionist, who has always been popularly 
accepted as the hero and chief instrument of Italian inde- 
pendence and nationality. All instruments have their use ; 
the revolutionist. Garibaldi, was a mighty factor toward 
Italian unity ; but it was Cavour, the conservative, who re- 



HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 243 

deemed and regenerated Italy, just as, in America, John 
Brown, the fanatic, paved the way for Lincoln, the conser- 
vative statesman. 
• The way was rapidly being paved for this great man's 
coming. Nominated for the presidency in May, i860, 
Abraham Lincoln was elected in November following, and 
the American people faced a mighty crisis. 

Great men in the Nineteenth Century have not been 
meteoric ; they have been largely self-made ; the greatest 
of them all, Abraham Lincoln, was comparatively an un- 
known man in i860. 

" Who is this huckster in politics ? " demanded the chief 
spokesman of the radical Abolitionists. 

Indeed, of " this obscure, not to say unknown man," as he 
was described. Dr. Edward Channing remarks, " It is certain 
that at that time few persons realized the grandeur of Lin- 
coln's character, his splendid common sense, and his mar- 
vellous insight into the real nature of things." 

But the agitators of the South realized what the election 
of a republican president meant. Congress, in December, 
i860, sought to pass compromise measures ; but the day of 
compromise had gone forever. Then South Carolina, 
seeking to maintain her stand as a sovereign State whose 
rights were paramount to those of the nation, failed to ap- 
preciate the constitutional progress of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury and the democratic spirit that underlies true national- 
ity. She asserted her right to go out of the Union, if she 
wished to, and on the twentieth of December, i860, "se- 
ceded ;" — that is, declared through her State convention, 
that "the union between the State of South Carolina and 
other States united with her under the compact entitled 



244 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

* The Constitution of the United States of America ' is dis- 
solved." The people of South Carolina were not asked to 
vote upon this action ; the State convention simply author- 
ized it. Other Southern States followed in the same way ; 
and by the first of February, 1861, seven Southern States 
had, in convention, also passed ordinances of secession and 
elected delegates to a Constitutional convention at Mont- 
gomery in Alabama. There, on the fourth of February, 
1 861, the "Confederate States of America," were decreed, 
the main object of which confederation was, according to 
its constitution, "to recognize and protect the institution 
of slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States." 
Jefferson Davis was made president of the new Confeder- 
acy, and was inaugurated on the twenty-second of Febru- 
ary, 1 86 1 — Washington's birthday — the memorial day 
of the man who, in his immortal Farewell Adddress, had 
so solemnly pleaded with his fellow-countrymen. 

"The unity of government which constitutes you one 
people," said George Washington, "is the main pillar in 
the edifice of your real independence. . . . Cherish a cor- 
dial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it, . , . dis- 
countenance whatever may suggest even a suspicion that 
it can, in any event, be abandoned, and indignantly frown 
upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any 
portion of our country froin the rest, or to enfeeble the 
sacred ties which now link together the various parts." 

Abraham Lincoln proposed to do what Washington had 
insisted upon — preserve the Union. He was inaugurated 
March 4, 1861 ; and in his address as President of the 
United States, he outhned his determination. 

" I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the 



HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 245 

Constitution," he said, "the Union of these States is per- 
petual. ... No State upon its own mere motion can law- 
fully go out of the Union ; . . . therefore the Union is 
unbroken. ... In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow- 
countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of 
civil war. The government will not assist you. You can 
have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. 
You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the gov- 
ernment, while I shall have the most solemn one to pre- 
serve, protect, and defend it." 

That was Abraham Lincoln, the incarnation of a just 
conservatism. And how his plea for the brotherhood of 
Americans supplemented Washington's plea for an undis- 
turbed Union ! His inaugural words are immortal : 

" I am loath to close. We are not enemies but friends. 
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have 
strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The 
mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield 
and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all 
over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union 
when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better 
angels of our nature." 

"This broad land," that Abraham Lincoln had taken an 
oath to keep intact, had widened and developed marvel- 
lously since the day when Washington wrote his Farewell 
Address, sixty-five years before. When Abraham Lincoln 
was inaugurated as president in 1861, the thirteen original 
States had grown to thirty-four ; the limits of the land had 
swollen from the eight hundred thousand square miles of 
Washington's day to three millions ; the population had in- 
creased from four millions to more than thirty-one millions ; 



246 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

the republic had grown from a loose confederacy of isolated 
communities, which the world regarded with curiosity and 
indifference, to a great nation, which all the world re- 
spected, recognized, and feared. As the crisis came which 
Lincoln must face and control, the world prophesied 
the downfall of the republic ; and absolutism, not yet 
"scotched" in Europe, gleefully prophesied the failure of 
democracy in America. Even reformers across the sea had, 
many of them, echoed Mrs. Browning's gratuitous and in- 
sufferable " curse," because America, a free republic, still 
endured slavery : 

" When wise men give you their praise, 
They shall pause in the heat of the phrase, 

As if carried too far ; 

When ye boast your own charters are true, 

Ye shall blush ; for the thing which ye do 

Derides what ye are. 

This is the curse. Write!" 

And the Emperor of the French, with his acknowledged 
contempt for liberty, voiced the aristocratic sentiment of 
Europe in language that but thinly veiled his belief that 
the American republic was doomed. 

Even in America, opinion was divided. Radical Repub- 
licans and Abolition leaders were inclined to advise a peace- 
able separation, believing that any attempt to maintain a 
Union in which such hostile forces existed as slavery and 
freedom was an impossibility. WiHiam Lloyd Garrison, a 
leader of the Abolition sentiment, insisted on disunion. 
"If we would see the slave power overthrown," he said, 
"the Union must be dissolved ;" and even Horace Greeley, 
the greatest editor of his day, the champion of free speech, 



HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 247 

free labor, and free men, asserted that if the slave States 
chose to form an independent nation they had a clear 
moral right to do so. 

Fortunately for humanity and progress Abraham Lincoln 
held other views. From his youth a hater of slavery, he 
still held that his personal opinions were of no weight in 
this crisis. 

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the 
Union," he declared. " I am naturally anti-slavery. If 
slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. But I took an 
oath that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, pro- 
tect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. 
This oath forbids me to practically indulge my primary ab- 
stract judgment on the moral question of slavery, I would 
save the Union ; I would save it the shortest way under the 
Constitution, , , . Whatever I do, I shall do because it 
helped to save the Union." 

This noble position of a just conservatism, of a man who 
knew his duty and stood ready to execute it, Abraham 
Lincoln steadfastly kept through the four years of bitter 
and wasting war that followed his inauguration as president. 

For that war came speedily. Compromise and conces- 
sion were no longer possible. The Southern States, in a 
firm belief in their right to withdraw from the Union if 
they so desired, seceded. The Northern leaders, believing in 
the national idea to which all the world was advancing, held 
that the voluntary union of States into a nation could not be 
dissolved by the action of one or more States ; for as Mr, 
Lincoln declared, " One party to a contract may violate or 
break it, but it requires all to lawfully rescind it." 

Unprepared for war — the ever-repeated story when war 



248 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

actually comes, — weakened by the withdrawal of many 
army and navy officers who sympathized with the South, or 
believed it their duty to " stand loyal to their State," rather 
than to the republic that had educated and supported them, 
the military force of the United States was sadly depleted, 
and many of the southern forts which belonged to the 
whole Union were actually taken possession of by the 
States on whose soil they stood. One such point of de- 
fence, however. Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, 
South Carolina, was held by an officer who believed that his 
oath to the republic was higher than his duty to his State. 

" I am a Southern man," repHed Major Robert Ander- 
son in command at Fort Sumter, when urged to desert 
his post ; " but I have been assigned to the defence of 
Charleston Harbor, and I intend to defend it." 

He had the opportunity to prove his noble words. 
Stung to foolish and hasty action by the demands of their 
own hot heads and the defiant position of Major Anderson 
and his little command, the South Carolina forces opened 
fire on Fort Sumter on the twelfth of April, 1861 ; on the 
fourteenth the fort surrendered, riddled by the bombard- 
ment and wasted by fire ; but Major Anderson had done 
his duty, and the foolish action of "the first gun" threw 
the responsibility of war upon the Southern leaders, and 
aroused the North to united, determined, and patriotic 
action. 

Then war followed — the most determined and, in many 
respects, the most notable struggle of the century ; for it 
was waged for a principle, by men of equal courage, equal 
fortitude, and equal will, brothers in speech and lineage ; 
the most dreadful of all conflicts — a civil war. 



HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 249 

Great armies were raised ; great battles were fought ; 
great victories were won. There was patriotism according 
to the Northern idea north of the Potomac ; south of the 
Potomac there was patriotism according to the Southern 
idea ; and on both sides were valor, devotion, sacrifice, 
and faith. Speedily a great general was made leader on 
the Southern side — Robert E. Lee ; gradually a greater 
general was evolved on the Northern side — Ulysses S. 
Grant ; and finally, after months and years of mistakes, 
errors, failures, re-enforcements, and successes, the war be- 
came a campaign, desperately waged for victory, between 
those two rival captains. 

The struggle was fought out on Southern soil ; only once 
did the Confederate armies succeed in an invasion of the 
north ; and at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, on the first, 
second, and third of July, 1863, the invaders were repulsed 
and driven back after one of the decisive battles of the 
world — the terrible battle of Gettysburg. 

The war hinged mainly on the possession of the border 
States — those that had always formed the dividing-line 
between North and South, between slavery and freedom '; 
and it was due to the patient determination of an even 
greater leader than Grant or Lee — Abraham Lincoln, the 
president — that these border States were held, saved, and 
retained for the Union. 

By his wise, patient, and conservative action, — yielding 
neither to the defiance of the South nor to the impatience 
of the North, swayed neither by victory nor defeat, by 
failure or success, — Abraham Lincoln held strictly to his 
course — to save the Union. Then, at last, when after 
two years of uncertain war and ineffectual campaigns, he 



250 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

saw that the people of the North were beginning to beheve 
in him alone, to trust to him and to him only as the real 
saviour of the Union ; when he knew that the time was ripe 
for one vital and crowning act that would strengthen the 
North, compel the rebellious South, convince the wavering 
border States, and show the watching world that the gov- 
ernment of the United States was pledged to freedom as 
well as nationality, Abraham Lincoln acted. 

On the first of January, 1863, he issued the emancipation 
proclamation, which he had long contemplated ; in which, as 
he declared, "I am going to fulfil the promise made to 
myself and to my God ; " for which, so he told his cabi- 
net, he alone was responsible. " I do not wish for your 
advice about the main matter ; that I have determined for 
myself," he said. And thus that immortal document ran : 
"Now therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the 
United States, by virtue of the power vested in me as 
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United 
States in time of actual armed rebellion against the au- 
thority and government of the United States, and as a fit 
and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, 
do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord 
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, in accordance 
with my purpose so to do, order and declare that all per- 
sons held as slaves within said designated States and parts 
of States are and henceforth shall be free, and that the 
Executive government of the United States, including the 
military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and 
maintain the freedom of such persons." 

It was done ; this edict, which, as Mr. Rhodes declares, 
"heralded a new epoch in the world's progress," was thus 



HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 25 1 

given to the world, and the nature and complexion of the 
republic's struggle for union and nationality were utterly 
and irrevocably changed. 

And not only was the complexion of the war for the 
Union changed by Abraham Lincoln's immortal act ; pub- 
lic opinion throughout the world was changed. England, 
which had too long toyed with the question of right, and to 
the eternal shame of Gladstone, England's leading states- 
man, had leaned towards recognition of the Southern Con- 
federacy, — a possible power based upon the slavery that 
England had so arrogantly condemned, — was turned by 
Lincoln's act of justice from foe to friend ; that is to say, 
the people of England, led by such inspired men as John 
Bright, became staunch supporters of the Union, and gave 
a hearty amen to the prayer of their great preacher, New- 
man Hall : " God bless and strengthen the North ; give 
victory to their arms ! " France, whose emperor from the 
first was unfriendly to the Union, really favored the North ; 
for, remembering her own struggle for freedom, the 
people, as John Stuart Mill wrote from Southern France 
to an American friend, "are unquestionably with you." 
The people of Europe, indeed, so far as they compre- 
hended the situation, were friendly to the people of the 
American Republic ; but with the rulers it was different. 

Chief among these unfriendly rulers was, as I have inti- 
mated, the Emperor of the French. Professing to derive 
his title from the will of the people, Louis Napoleon recog- 
nized no will as superior to his own, and schemed to con- 
trol affairs not only in Italy, Syria, and Algeria, — in 
Europe, Asia, and Africa, — but in America as well. Pos- 
ing as the Heaven-sent leader of the Latin race, he sent his 



252 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

thoughts across the sea, and saw his opportunity in dis- 
tracted America, where, as he fondly dreamed, the Repub- 
lic of the United States was doomed to speedy destruction, 
and where he might, therefore, safely set on foot an enter- 
prise that should exalt the Latin over the Anglo-Saxon 
race, and make Napoleon III. the head and hero of it all. 

To this restless adventurer opportunity was never lack- 
ing. The sympathy of Europe was with Italy rather than 
with him, because of his double dealing toward the Italian 
desire for nationality ; and he felt that he must recover his 
lost prestige, especially with the French people, who always 
mistrusted, even when they supported him, because his 
name seemed to them a guaranty of strength and order. 

Across the sea, in the republic of Mexico, there had 
been unsettled and revolutionary conditions ever since the 
close of the war with the United States in 1848, and the 
overthrow and flight of the dictator Santa Anna in 1853. 
Spanish-American republics learn the wisdom of order 
slowly ; and Mexico, from the time of her independence, 
had been especially unfortunate — though the most un- 
stable republic was preferable to Spanish despotism. 

But out of these confusions finally emerged in 1861 a 
semblance of peace, with the victory of the liberalist, 
Benito Juarez, as president of the republic, and the suc- 
cessful termination of the three years' War of Reform. In 
this war, however, the property of certain foreigners resi- 
dent in Mexico had suffered loss, while the expense of 
redeeming the republic from the grasp of the reactionists 
and " illiberals," crippled the country, and led Juarez and 
his congress to the unwise measure of suspending the 
payment of bonds and foreign obligations. 



HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 253 

This of course angered the foreign governments whose 
subjects were thus affected ; and the three powers most 
interested — England, France, and Spain — demanded 
justice and a settlement of the claims for indebtedness, 
amounting to over eighty millions of dollars. At a con- 
vention at London in 1861, the three powers made an 
alliance to enforce their demands; and in January, 1862, 
the republic of Mexico was invaded by a joint military and 
naval expedition of England, France, and Spain. 

The United States, when urged to join this debt-collect- 
ing alliance, bluntly refused ; and instead, offered to help 
Mexico either with money or credit. But the allies would 
have justice only from Mexico, and the Mexicans prepared 
to fight. 

By some wise management, however, on the part of 
Mexican diplomats, the trouble was arranged so far as 
England and Spain were concerned. Spain found that 
her dream of reconquering Mexico for the Spanish crown 
was not possible ; and England, not altogether satisfied 
with the company into which she had fallen, hastened to 
agree to any just compromise. 

But the Emperor Napoleon III. believed that his great 
opportunity had come. His soldiers were on Mexican 
soil ; across the border, the great republic, that had given 
him welcome and a home in his days of exile and disaster, 
was fighting for its very existence. There was no time 
like the present ; and Louis Napoleon, with all the ambi- 
tion and none; of the ability of his great uncle, determined 
to carry out his scheme of control, make true his dream of 
a universal fusion of the Latin race and the overthrow of 
the Anglo-Germanic powers, and establish in Mexico a 



254 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

great Latin empire, of which France — and therefore Louis 
Napoleon Bonaparte — should be mainspring, dictator, and 
head. 

So, when the other allies withdrew, the French troops 
remained ; and, joining to themselves certain recreant 
Mexicans who were ready to conspire against the republic, 
they marched into the interior. The patriots rallied to 
repel the invasion, and on the fifth of May, 1 862, won the 
victory of Puebla, still a national anniversary under the 
title of ''the glorious fifth of May." 

But Napoleon had made up his mind. Defeat could 
not be permitted. Re-enforcements were hurried across 
the sea until their numbers were irresistible ; the French 
troops advanced steadily to victory, conquering the north 
and south. Occupying the city of Mexico, they first estab- 
lished a provisional government that usurped the executive 
power, and then, under orders from Napoleon, decreed 
the Empire of Mexico, and offered the crown to a Euro- 
pean prince, Maximilian, archduke of Austria, and brother 
of its emperor. In June, 1864, the Austrian arrived in 
Mexico ; upheld and defended by foreign bayonets, he ruled 
as emperor in the "halls of the Montezumas," and Napo- 
leon's crazy scheme of conquest and Latin supremacy 
seemed on the highroad to success. 

In other parts of the world, also, the Emperor Napoleon 
was striving to have the foremost " finger in the pie." He 
had forced from Italy, as the price of his " assistance," the 
provinces of Nice and Savoy ; and Germany was only re- 
strained by the cooling advice of England from the in- 
dignant protest of war over what would some day become 
a question of Franco-German boundaries. Napoleon's 



HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 255 

agents intrigued in Belgium for the annexation of that 
kingdom to France ; and other of his agents, in the same 
business, stirred up war between Spain and Morocco ; his 
soldiers occupied the chief military posts in Syria, and 
kept England perplexed over the imperial plotter's designs 
in the East. He attempted to dictate to England as to 
her action when, in 1863, the Poles broke out in another 
insurrection, and he almost involved France in a " single- 
handed war " with Russia. He set Europe laughing at 
his pretensions as he endeavored to follow his great uncle's 
lead, and assemble a convention of kings at Paris ; and, by 
secretly encouraging the designs of Prussia in her great 
land-steal of the province of Schleswig-Holstein from Den- 
mark, he helped bring about the Schleswig-Holstein War 
of 1864, in which Prussia and Austria united against Den- 
mark. 

This war was concluded in a few months by the defeat 
of the Danes, a truce and peace conference at London, 
and finally, by the treaty of Vienna, on the thirtieth of 
October, 1864, under which Denmark relinquished the old 
Danish provinces of Schleswig-Holstein to the victorious 
allies. 

There was, in fact, a good deal of restlessness and strife 
throughout the world between i860 and 1865. Besides 
the great struggle in the United States, the war in Mex- 
ico, the Prussian attack on Denmark, and the war for 
liberation in Italy, there were rebellions in Poland, New 
Zealand, and China. Spain sought the conquest of 
Morocco ; and Russia quelled into submission the long 
defiant Circassians of the Caucasus, and advanced her 
power by force in Central Asia. 



256 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

But, in spite of wars and rumors of wars, the world 
made a substantial advance ; and Galileo's famous declara- 
tion, under equally unfavorable conditions, "and yet it 
moves," might apply to this season of unrest, when, in- 
deed, England was the only power pursuing a policy of 
peace. For in the same year in which the war for free- 
dom and union broke out in America, and while Italy was 
struggling for independence, the last man of all the world 
from whom a progressive advance might be expected, took 
a mighty stride forward. On the third of March, 1861, 
the day before that on which Abraham Lincoln was inau- 
gurated president of the United States, Alexander II., 
Czar of all the Russians, emancipated the serfs in his 
dominions, and practically abolished manhood slavery. 

Whether this act of liberation came from his own pro- 
gressive ideas, or was the heritage of a command from his 
dying and defeated father, it was certainly a mighty deed 
— a concession of despotism to liberty, of bigotry to 
progress. 

Other lands were making similar concessions at about 
that same period of the world's history The Japanese, 
for centuries confined within the limits of their own bar- 
baric exclusiveness, awoke from their long sleep of ages 
when Perry the American knocked at their door, and fol- 
lowed up their treaty of commerce and amity by sending 
an embassy from this island kingdom to meet and study 
the civilizations of the world. On the fourteenth of May, 
1 860, the Japanese embassy was received at Washington ; 
from America it crossed the sea, and visited most of the 
European capitals, thus laying the foundations for that 
direct and friendly association with the outside world 



HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 257 

which resulted finally in the establishment of treaty rela- 
tion with eighteen civilized nations. 

A new era began, also, in Germany in the accession to 
the throne of Prussia, in 1861, of King William the First ; 
while the American visit of the Prince of Wales, the heir 
to the Enghsh throne, began the gradual drawing nearer, 
in i860, of two nations kindred in speech and manners, 
after nearly a century of distrust and separation. 

This growing consideration and friendliness between 
England and America felt its severest strain, and stood 
its direst test, as the war between the States of the Ameri- 
can Union began to have a resultant influence upon Eng- 
lish society and people. From some inexplicable cause 
the ruling classes in England favored the Southern cause ; 
but the working-men of England favored the North in its 
efforts to re-establish union and proclaim liberty. Even 
while Gladstone, prime minister of England, was saying in 
a public speech "We may anticipate with certainty the 
success of the Southern States so far as their separation 
from the North is concerned," John Bright, the real leader 
of England's liberal and progressive thought at that time, 
declared to the English people : " I say that this war, be 
it successful or not, be it Christian or not, be it wise or 
not, is a war to sustain the government, and to sustain the 
authority of a great nation ; and that the people of England, 
if they are true to their own sympathies, to their own his- 
tory, and to their own great act of 1834, will have no sym- 
pathy with those who wish to build up a great empire on 
the perpetual bondage of millions of their fellow men." 

There was a strong movement, however, among the rul- 
ing men in England to recognize the Southern Confederacy, 



258 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

or at least to prevail upon France, Russia, and the other 
" great powers " to intervene in the struggle that was shak- 
ing the republic. 

But the clear-headed and wise queen of England would 
not consent, and threw all her influence on the side of the 
North ; while the real workers of England, the five million 
disfranchised men and the four millions who had a vote, 
stood loyal to freedom and the cause of the Union as it 
was being fought out in America, even when the failure of 
the cotton crop, upon which their daily bread almost de- 
pended, drove the working-people of England close to 
suffering and starvation. Let America remember that 
to-day, even as Abraham Lincoln did when, in 1863, he 
wrote to the working-men of Manchester : " I cannot but 
regard your decisive utterances as an instance of sublime 
Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any 
age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and re- 
inspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth, and 
of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity, 
and freedom." 

" We have reason to thank the English common people," 
wrote Mr. Rhodes in 1 899, " for their comprehension, right 
thinking, and hearty utterance of sympathy, and for their 
appreciation and admiration of Abraham Lincoln. They 
received his words gladly ; and while trained writers criti- 
cised his grammar, his 'inelegant English,' his backwoods 
style of expression, they grasped the ideas for which he 
stood, and their hearts went out to him." 

Lincoln's "grammar, inelegant English, and backwoods 
expressions," of which the cultured classes complained, 
have to-day a place in English literature which neither the 



HOW ANOTHER MAN ENFRANCHISED A RACE. 259 

ponderous phrases of English orators nor the tripping sen- 
tences of English writers can surpass. For his words 
went straight to the root of things, and found lodgment 
in every heart that beat responsive to the love of freedom 
and the appreciation of simple and rugged eloquence. 
His two-minute speech, on " the second great day at Get- 
tysburg," as Mr. Mabie fitly characterizes it, at the dedi- 
cation of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg — the 
memorial field of that great and decisive battle of the war — 
was "notable," says Mr. Morse, "because through it the 
literature of our tongue received one of its most distin- 
guished acquisitions;" even to-day it rings out, not to 
America only, but to all the world, like a trumpet-note of 
exultant freedom, voiced by a master, a prophet, and a man. 
" Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought 
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty 
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal . . . We are met on a great battle-field. . . . We 
have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final 
resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that 
nation might live. ... It is for us to be here dedicated 
to the great task remaining before us . . . that we here 
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; 
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free- 
dom ; and that government of the people, by the people, 
for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 



CHAPTER XV. 

HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME IN MORE LANDS THAN ONE. 
{Frojn j86j to iSyo.) 

THE "great task," for which Lincoln so eloquently 
pleaded at Gettysburg, very nearly approached com- 
pletion when the year 1 865 was born. 

Four years of terrible war had brought victory to the 
armies of the Union ; foreign hostility and foreign inter- 
ference had been stilled by the knowledge of American 
determination and freedom's wonderful success ; the Eman- 
cipation Proclamation of 1863 cleared the atmosphere and 
electrified the world. The schemes of Louis Napoleon, 
who sought to lead the powers of Europe into intervention, 
recognition, and "perhaps," as he suggested, "even more 
active measures," were beaten down by the hammer-blows of 
Grant and the magnificent patience and persistence of Lin- 
coln. Russia returned a decisive and instant refusal ; Ger- 
many bought United States bonds with perfect confidence, 
and "was obstinately bent against " the cause of the bellig- 
erent Confederacy. "All parties and classes in Europe," 
wrote Mr. Adams in 1865, "are resolved on a strict neutral- 
ity;" and John Bright, in the fall of 1864, wrote to Charles 
Sumner, "to re-elect Mr. Lincoln will be to tell Europe 
that your country is to be restored and slavery destroyed." 

That announcement to Europe and the world was made 
in November, 1864. Abraham Lincoln was re-elected 

260 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

From Brady's Original Photograph 
" Ne7v birth of our iie-w soil, (he first American " 



HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 26 1 

president of the United States by two hundred and twelve 
electoral votes against his opponent's twenty-one, and by a 
clear majority of half a million in the popular vote. 

" Seldom in history," said Emerson, " was so much 
staked on a popular vote ; I suppose never in history." 

" It is not wise to swap horses when crossing streams," 
declared Mr. Lincoln in the quaint, homely, direct phrase 
that the people loved. 

No " swapping " was done ; the war was to be fought to 
a final and triumphant end ; and that end came when, on the 
ninth of April, 1865, General Lee surrendered his army 
at Appomattox to General Grant. The South had fought 
nobly, persistently, valiantly. Against ever-increasing 
odds ; against the growing hostility of the world ; against 
privation, suffering, disaster, and loss, they still fought on, 
and only gave up the struggle when they recognized the 
uselessness of continued conflict, the loss forever of the 
chief privilege for which they had fought, and the slowly 
growing conviction that an undivided union, pledged to free- 
dom and founded on equality, was stronger and better than 
two rival and separate republics, or than a loose confeder- 
acy of States built on the theory of temporary rather than 
indissoluble association. 

"I can promise for the Southern people," said General 
Lee, after it was all over, " that they will faithfully obey 
the Constitution and laws of the United States, treat the 
negro with kindness and humanity, and fulfil every duty 
incumbent on peaceful citizens, loyal to the Constitution of 
their country." 

"With malice toward none, with charity for all," said Mr. 
Lincoln in his immortal second inaugural, " with firmness 



262 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive 
on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the Nation's 
wounds . . . to do all which may cherish a just and lasting 
peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

It was not to be permitted to this great and noble man 
to finish the work. He saw the end of the conflict ; he 
walked, not in triumph but in sadness, through the streets 
of the fallen capital of the short-lived Confederacy ; then, 
like Moses standing in view of the promised land, he died, 
stricken down by an assassin's bullet and a villain's deed, 
just when the South needed his wisdom and his love even 
more than did the triumphant North. 

So the great man of the century passed out of life ; and 
as the whole world, just learning to appreciate his worth 
as, to-day, it is just beginning to recognize his real great- 
ness, mourned its loss, the words of the American poet, 
Willis, written upon the death of a much smaller great 
man, were aptly fitted to the departure of this, — " the first 
American:" 

" For the stars on our banner grown suddenly dim, 
Let us weep in our darkness ; but weep not for liim : — 
Not for him who, departing, left millions in tears; 
Not for him who has died, full of honors and years; 
Not for him who ascended fame's ladder so high. 
From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky." 

To me Abraham Lincoln is the typical man of the Nine- 
teenth Century. Can any one of any blood in any land — 
Christian or pagan — stand as his equal .■' 

None surely will question his claim to being esteemed 
the typical American. That prophet-poet who foresaw so 
clearly — Lowell, the highest type of American culture — 



HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 263 

has sketched the martyr-president in hnes now grown 
familiar : 

" Great captains with their guns and drums 
Disturb our judgment for the hour, 

But at last silence comes ; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 

Our children shall behold his fame. 
The kindly-earnest, brave, fore-seeing man. 

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

After the bloody arbitrament of war, other disturbances 
and happenings seem small by comparison. But the moral 
battle-field is often the sterner and more stubborn of the 
two. In America the new president, Andrew Johnson, 
and the Congress were confronted with the questions of 
reward and punishment, and of the methods of restoring 
the rights and privileges of citizens to the inhabitants of 
the Southern States. It proved a complex and puzzling 
problem, fertile with the mistakes of partisan or fanatical 
"reconstructors," unrepentant "rebels," and unwise offi- 
cials and law-makers. The problem involved the security 
and safety of the exhausted South, to which the triumphant 
North was pledged, but in which the emancipated negroes 
were made the factors in a campaign of overturned condi- 
tions, that threw the lowest order of demagogues to the 
surface, and awoke the passions rather than the patience 
of the land-owners of the South. It involved even the 
president of the United States himself, as a border man of 
personal obstinacy and antagonistic tendencies, who, in 
seeking to enforce his own ideas, swung away from the 
party that had placed him in power, and became so hostile 
to the majority in Congress as to lead to his impeachment, 



264 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

in which he only escaped conviction and removal by a 
slender majority. 

The disputes that filled his presidency hindered the 
reconstruction of the Union, but law and order at last 
prevailed ; while the glory of the republic and its true 
meaning as the land of liberty were established by two 
Amendments to the Constitution, one of which, in 1865, 
officially established Lincoln's decree of emancipation, by 
declaring the absolute and entire abolition of slavery ; 
while the other, adopted in 1 868, guaranteed the protection 
of the law to all, and made all native or naturalized resi- 
dents of the republic, citizens of the United States. It was 
a mighty step in advance, made at the cost of thousands of 
lives and millions of treasure, in the war waged for the in- 
tegrity of the Union and the freedom and equality of man. 

The close of the civil war in the United States hastened 
the overthrow of that other monstrous and futile attempt 
against personal and national liberty in America. The 
ambitious and aristocratic schemes of the Emperor Louis 
Napoleon, looking to the establishment of an empire in 
Mexico, ruled over by one of his puppets, and having for 
its purpose the overthrow of Anglo-Germanic supremacy by 
the unity of the Latin races, were rudely and utterly 
brought to naught by the re-estabhshment of the complete 
authority of the Union. A veteran army of victorious 
Americans was ready to enforce, if need be, the assertion 
of the Monroe doctrine, and to succor the threatened liber- 
ties of Mexico. Troops were massed on the Mexican bor- 
der; the French minister was notified that the French 
must leave — and they left. Louis Napoleon, baffled and 
defeated in an enterprise unpopular even in France, made 



HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 265 

a virtue of necessity ; and in March, 1 86y, he withdrew the 
French armies from Mexico, leaving his " assisted Emperor " 
Maximilian deserted and alone. 

The end came speedily. Unprotected by French bay- 
onets, the " empire " of Maximilian crumbled at once ; and 
the unfortunate young Austrian, captured by the Mexican 
patriots, who' knew not the clemency of their northern 
neighbors, was adjudged an enemy of the republic, and 
promptly put to death. And thus the pretentious experi- 
ment of a Latin empire in North America went down in 
inevitable and dismal failure, while the tragedy of Maximil- 
ian and Carlotta stands as another terrible warning to 
usurpers and kings. 

Meantime, across the sea, Louis Napoleon was having 
troubles of his own, and was stupidly but perhaps uncon- 
sciously laying in his own path snares and pitfalls, destined 
soon to trap and destroy him. His power indeed seemed 
supreme, but it was hollow and inflated ; the " Sphinx of 
the Tuileries," as that practical American and sound 
republican, John Hay, called him, was found to have, after 
all, but "feet of clay ;" and the people of France as well as 
of the world were gradually finding him out. His unwise 
interference in Mexico ; his weak and futile attempt to 
" maintain the predominance of France " in the Schleswig- 
Holstein war of 1864; the rise of a strongman in Ger- 
many ; the decline of administrative ability in France ; the 
growing influence upon the emperor of corrupt and selfish 
adventurers, who sought wealth and power at his expense, — 
all tended to weaken and unmask him, even while he was 
possessed by his own pride, and sought to blind the people 
ill the old imperial Roman way, by beautifying Paris, and 



266 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

emphasizing the splendors of his court. In the summer of 
1 867, during the great International Exhibition at Paris, he 
entertained the princes and potentates of Europe ; and in 
that splendid "show year" the Emperor Napoleon III. 
seemed, like his wonderful uncle in 18 10, to have "attained 
the pinnacle of human greatness." But a "pinnacle " is a 
very "teeterish " place to stand on, as the Emperor Napo- 
leon in due time discovered, and as John Hay, studying 
events in Paris, prophetically expressed it : 

" For an CEdipus-People is coming fast 

With swelled feet limping on, 
If they shout his true name once aloud 

His false, foul power is gone. 
Afraid to fight and afraid to fly, 

He cowers in an abject shiver; 
The people will come to their own at last — 

God is not mocked forever." 

On the other side of the Rhine a growing and unifying 
power was gradually crowding upon France. A man was 
there rising to leadership who was destined to make Prussia 
great and Germany united, and whose indomitable will and 
"clear perception " of his country's needs were to usher in 
a new era in the history of Germany, of Europe, and the 
world; for in October, 1862, Count Otto Von Bismarck was 
made prime minister of Prussia and minister of foreign 
affairs; while in 1867 he became Chancellor of the North 
German Confederation and the chief figure in the monu- 
mental plan of a greater and united Germany. 

The North German Confederation was a union for mutual 
protection of all the German States north of the Main, and 
was one of the results of the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, 
sometimes called the " Seven Weeks' War " for it was 



HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 267 

begun, waged, and ended within that brief space of time ; 
Prussia then and thus put an end to the long rivalry of 
Austria in German affairs, and came from it victor, leader, 
and organizer. 

Austria had helped Prussia wrest from Denmark the 
Schleswig-Holstein territory, in the war of 1 864 ; then 
they quarrelled over the spoils ; the war of words grew to 
a war of deeds ; and the German States — North and South 
— divided into two parties, as in America, though on a 
question of leadership rather than of slavery. Austria de- 
clared that she was the upholder of " the freedom, power, 
and integrity of the whole German Fatherland ; " Prussia 
also declared that the Fatherland was in danger from the 
designs of Austria, "faithless and regardless of treaties." 
And then, north and south, the rival factions of Germany 
sprang at each other's throats. 

In 1864 a German inventor had produced a breech-load- 
ing musket known as the Prussian needle-gun. That 
terrible invention won the war against Austria within seven 
weeks. The South German armies could not withstand 
the withering fire of the deadly needle-gun backed up by 
powerful artillery ; the battle of Sadowa, in June, 1 866, was 
an Austrian defeat, and the actual war campaign of seven 
days led to the triumph of Prussia and the treaty of Prague. 

This treaty gave to Prussia all that she demanded. To 
her ally, Italy, it gave Venice, and other Austrian posses- 
sions in Italy ; it excluded Austria from the German Union, 
and brought about the North German Confederation of 
1867, with Prussia as the head of the league and Count 
Bismarck as its directing hand. 

The treaty of Prague, although it said nothing of the 



268 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Emperor of France, was the signal for the death-knell of 
Napoleon III. The success of Prussia meant the downfall 
of the empire in France. 

Because he had kept his hands off in the conflict with 
Austria, Napoleon suggested to Prussia that he should be 
rewarded by a few frontier towns for being so good and 
friendly. 

" Not a single foot of German soil," Bismarck replied ; 
and Napoleon, again disappointed, began to scheme anew. 
He had met an opponent before whom he was but a child; 
but like a child, he went headlong into folly. 

How far the spirit of American nationalism and the 
success of America's dominant sovereignty affected the 
other nations of the world we may not estimate ; few of 
them perhaps would acknowledge this influence; but there 
can be little doubt that the forward movement in the 
American republic, from the Revolution that gave it birth 
to the conflict that tested it and the acts that have made 
it, at the close of the Nineteenth Century a great world- 
power, has had an incalculable influence upon the attitude 
and development of other nations. ( 

This influence, conscious or unconscious, which found its 
highest expression in Abraham Lincoln, displayed itself 
not only in the remarkable growth of emigration from 
Europe to America, but in the trend of thought and action 
in Europe. Great men, wrought upon by this American 
idea of freedom, sought to ingraft upon European thought 
a modified democracy or a finer spirit of union. 

In England, John Bright, upon whom had fallen the 
mantle of Richard Cobden as a moral reformer, sought to 
make reform practical and helpful to his fellow-countrymen. 



HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 269 

He has been called the "modern representative of the 
ancient tribunes of the people ; " having " as his password 
and his political livelihood " the welfare of the common 
people ; "full of faith that popular instincts are both morally- 
right and intellectually sound " — the faith that Abraham 
Lincoln had. In France, Adolph Thiers, champion of 
liberalism in politics, constantly arraigned the imperiahsm 
of Louis Napoleon, charging him with being the enemy and 
betrayer of the French people, while his vigorous denun- 
ciation of the emperor's Mexican policy found expression 
in a warning of danger to the state which was scarcely 
short of prophetic. In Italy, Cavour's influence, even 
though the great statesmen had gone, still swayed the 
actions of the liberal and determined unionist Victor Em- 
manuel, even when the ill-timed folly of the radical unionist 
Garibaldi, in 1867, almost plunged Italy in a new war; while 
in Spain, that noble republican, Emilio Castelar, " a pure 
and intelligent statesmen," as Edward Everett Hale calls 
him, in a land whose people, through centuries of despotism, 
had been trained to regard monarchy with superstitious 
reverence, strove to lead his fellow countrymen into the 
broader spirit of national independence. 

His work was unconsciously fostered by the unprincipled 
and unpopular Queen Isabella, who, in a reign torn by fac- 
tion and intrigue, lost first the respect, and then the confi- 
dence, of her subjects, and in 1868 was driven from her 
throne by a popular revolution, led by Marshal Serrano 
and General Prim, and fostered by Castelar. The latter 
would have attempted a republic, but the military leaders 
preferred a constitutional monarchy ; and, unable to decide 
upon any native prince capable of ruling, they went into 



2/0 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

the ''foreign market" for a king, first offering the crown 
to a German, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, a relative 
of King William of Prussia. 

This choice angered the Emperor Napoleon and his un- 
wise advisors, who claimed to see, in this invitation to a 
German prince, the interference of Germany in European 
affairs, and especially in those of the Latin countries, of 
whom Napoleon had determined to be the recognized 
leader and head. He saw no way of counteracting this 
North German influence save by war ; and secretly, but 
determinedly, he set about preparing for this crisis, and 
forcing Germany into the offensive. 

The wisdom of national union which was being worked 
out in Germany, and also in Italy, where Victor Emmanuel 
was gradually bringing the whole Italian peninsula, includ- 
ing even the papal territory of Rome itself, into a complete 
and consistent union, was seen also in Austria. There, 
what has been described as "a judicious readiness to 
acquiesce in accomplished facts," led the Emperor of Aus- 
tria, stunned by the shock of Sadowa, to consent to the 
advance proposed by his new and more liberal prime min- 
ister. Baron Beust, in 1867, and grant constitutional liberty 
to Hungary, and, by pronounced concessions, to allay the 
discontent in other divisions of the empire. In June, 1 86'/, 
the Emperor and Empress of Austria were crowned at 
Pesth as king and queen of Hungary ; and Francis Deak, 
the old-time friend and comrade of the patriot Kossuth, not 
only saw in this union of the "dual kingdoms" a result of 
his own exertions through years of discouragement, but 
was himself recognized as an important factor in the pacifi- 
cation and unity of Austria. 



HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 27 1 

All these movements marked a distinct advance ; but the 
years just preceding 1870 marked, also, a distinct advance 
in other than political and national measures. The world 
was being made anew by the march of invention, improve- 
ment, and neighborliness. In March, 1865, the first direct 
telegram from India was received in England ; the East 
and West were thus brought into instantaneous touch ; and 
the successful laying of the Atlantic cable, in the summer 
of 1866, after five unsuccessful attempts, joined the Old 
world and the New, and was the beginning of that vast 
enterprise in submarine telegraphy, which to-day seams the 
oceans and deep waters of the world with one hundred and 
fifty thousand miles of cable. More direct and quicker 
means of communication between Europe and the East 
were also secured, at the same time, by the successful 
completion of the Suez Canal. Through the narrow neck 
of land that separates Africa from Asia, and divides the 
waters of the Mediterranean and Red Seas, human ingenu- 
ity for nearly twenty-five hundred years, since the days of 
the Pharaoh Necho, had been endeavoring to cut a ditch 
for joining the waters of Europe and Asia — the Indian 
and Atlantic oceans. This was done at last, after ten 
years of labor in the shifting sand of Egypt, by an enter- 
prising and indomitable Frenchman, Ferdinand de Les- 
seps. In February, 1867, the first ship worked its way 
through the uncompleted canal ; and on the seventeenth of 
November, 1869, the work was pronounced complete, and 
the Suez Canal was formally opened by the Khedive of 
Egypt and representatives of all the kingdoms of Europe, 
when a fleet of fifty vessels sailed through the ninety miles 
of canal, — "a gala day for all comm^ercial nations." 



2/2 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

The year that witnessed the formal opening of the Suez 
Canal, witnessed also the completion of another link in 
world-connection. This was the Pacific railroad, the first 
direct route of steam communication across America, begun 
in November, 1865, and completed in May, 1869. The 
distance from Omaha to San Francisco, thus bridged by 
this great railroad enterprise, was nearly two thousand 
miles ; and the connection by rail between Omaha and New 
York completed the direct service in a railroad stretching 
over more than three thousand miles of plain and prairie, 
mountain and river, a gigantic engineering enterprise that 
opened up, to occupation and development, the wide and 
wonderful regions of "the Far West." 

This practical development of the United States by suc- 
cess in authority, growth, commercial expansion, and 
domestic vigor, as displayed between 1865 and 1870 in the 
triumph of the Union in 1865, in the acquisition by pur- 
chase, in 1 867, of Russian America, now known as Alaska, 
in the wonderful growth of trade and manufacture, and 
the foreign and interstate commerce after the success of 
the ocean cable and the overland railroad, led other Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples to consolidate and unite. On May 
first, 1867, the Dominion of Canada was proclaimed as the 
formal union, under one joint confederation, of the British 
provinces of North America ; into this confederation, how- 
ever, Newfoundland declined to enter; but in 1869 the 
territory of the great northern syndicate, known as the 
Hudson's Bay Company, was ceded to the British crown. 
And in 1870 this territory was incorporated in the Domin- 
ion, to be followed later by British Columbia, the North- 
west Territory, and Manitoba, the only protest to this 



HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 273 

action being the armed insurrection of the French element, 
which for more than a hundred years had chafed under 
the results of the defeat of Montcalm on the Plains of 
Abraham. The Canadian half-breed, Louis Riel, who led 
this Red River rebellion, was, however, defeated in 1870, 
and Canada was practically a united dominion of the Brit- 
ish Empire. The success of federation in Canada led at 
last to a closer union of the colonies of the crown,- fostered 
by concessions and aid from the wise queen of England ; 
and the colonial possessions of Great Britain grew and 
strengthened with the years. Thus was another result of 
American manhood and enterprise exhibited to the world ; 
for the home-rule system of colonial government was the 
direct outcome of the American Revolution, and the crown 
of Great Britain had learned wisdom by experience. As 
Mr. Mackenzie, the Englishman, declares, '' the vast folly 
of 1776 will not be repeated." 

A conservative reformer was at the helm in England. 
William Ewart Gladstone was prime minister, with so 
strong a support behind him as to enable him to uproot 
abuses and reform methods as had never before been pos- 
sible ; and the redress of the wrongs that still clung to 
the English state and the English church began vigorously 
in 1869 and 1870. But, with reforms, the demands of 
those most benefited grow. The workers protested 
against the despotism of society ; the regeneration of labor 
was demanded ; and, out of many grievances, by many 
unwise methods, much fanatical friction, and many threats 
of revolution, finally emerged in 1866 the first united 
revolt of labor. Germany and France had led in these 
unwise attempts at forcible readjustment, while the open 



274 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

antagonism between labor and capital led all governments 
to appreciate and seek to curb the advance of those ultra 
reformers known under the general name of Socialists. 

The more violent of these " social reformers " openly- 
declared that the triumph of their principles was only to be 
obtained '' by the violent overturning of all existing social 
order ; " and the plan upon which they would "reorganize " 
the world, was based upon such staggering demands as : no 
rent for land ; no inheritance of property ; no home prop- 
erty for those who left it for other lands ; a single direct 
tax; compulsory labor for all.; free education; national 
ownership of banks, methods of transportation, manufac- 
tures, and agriculture. 

This would indeed have overturned society ; and the 
great middle class, which is the strength and sinew of all 
lands, did not take kindly to the idea. But the laboring 
classes did believe in anything that would give them less 
work and more money ; so, one of the earliest outgrowths 
of this demand for the "emancipation of labor" was the" 
formation of trade and labor unions and the united protest 
of what are known as "strikes." 

The leader and chief agitator of this labor upheaval was 
a German socialist, resident in London, named Karl Marx. 
In 1 866 a congress of delegates of the " International 
Association of Laborers," meeting in Geneva in Switzer- 
land, under the directing guidance of Karl Marx, declared 
that "the emancipation of the laboring class must be 
accomplished by the laboring class itself, and must be ac- 
complished in every country where modern society exists." 
It also recommended the organization of workingmen 
against the "intrigues of capitahsts," the investigation of 



HOW LIBERTY AND UNION CAME. 275 

the conditions of the working-classes throughout the 
world ; the co-operation of workingmen in producing the 
results of their own labor, and the abolition of standing 
armies. 

This was the beginning of strikes and labor troubles, 
which first assuming formidable proportions in 1866 by- 
open-air meetings, processions, and organized resistance to 
capital, have disturbed the centres of trade, crippled pro- 
duction, antagonized capital, and terrorized unwilling com- 
rades through forty years of unrest, while, at the same 
time, reorganizing methods, shortening hours of labor, 
establishing improved methods of supply and demand, mak- 
ing capital less autocratic and labor more independent. 
So every reform, however hampered it may be by fanati- 
cism, extravagance, and revolt, must in time benefit more 
than it weakens, and help on the sure and steady progress 
of the world. 

The age of Abraham Lincoln, — the era of freedom, as 
we may call it, — which comprised the ten years from i860 
to 1870, had done wonders for the world. Emancipation 
in America and Russia, independence in Italy, union in 
Germany and Austria, liberalism in France and Spain, 
democracy, under the lead of Gladstone in England, con- 
solidation in Canada, and a closer approach toward federa- 
tion by the progressive English colonies throughout the 
world — these all had been helped on by, if not indirectly 
resulting from, that uprising of the people against outworn 
theories and despotic claims which, inspired by the ques- 
tionable demands of reform, and led on by that greatest of 
progressive conservatives, Abraham Lincoln, had pushed 
on the world in a mighty stride toward freedom. While 



2/6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

freeing labor from the shackles of time, and elevating pro- 
duction by advanced methods of creation and invention, it 
had prepared the real people to take their proper place as 
at once the makers of progress, the developers of power, 
the masters of ingenuity, and the civilizers of the world. 



"In giving the Genua}!, jieople political 
unity Bismarck realized their strongest and 
deepest desire , . . and wheti, as he ex- 
pressed it, ' Germany was put iti the saddle^ 
it tnade him a national hero." 

M-unrei Untith. 



THE AGE OF BISMARCK. 
Unity. 

[1870-1880.) 



PRINCE VON BISMARCK 

(Ptto Eduard Leopold), 
CREATOR OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE, 
Born Sckinhausen, Prttssia, April i, 18/J, 
Died Friedrichsruh, Prttssia, July 30, iSgS. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 
{From i8yo to i8y^.) 

WHEN Giiiseppi Garibaldi — "the lame lion of Ca- 
prera " as his admirers loved to call him, sought, 
with the radical reformer Mazzini, to unite Italy by revo- 
lutionary methods, his chief cry was, " Rome the capital of 
all Italy ! " Like all radical reformers, Garibaldi refused 
to listen to wisdom ; and when in 1867, with his insurgents, 
he invaded Roman territory, he was defeated at Mentana 
by the French soldiers, who were, with their bayonets, 
bolstering up the temporal power of the Pope. 

" Italy shall never enter Rome. No, never ! " declared 
the prime minister of the Emperor Napoleon ; and as, by 
treaty with France, King Victor Emmanuel was pledged not 
to interfere with the Papal dominion, it looked as if Gari- 
baldi's purpose and the desire of Cavour were not to be 
attained ; for almost the last words of the great Italian 
statesman were to the effect that Rome was the inevitable 
capital of United Italy. 

Cavour, rather than the minister of Napoleon, was the 
true prophet. North and south of the Papal power lay free 
and united Italy ; and every Italian in the Papal states, 
though a good Roman Catholic, was a better Italian, who, 
while acknowledging the spiritual sway of the Pope, denied 
his power as a temporal prince, and yearned for union with 

279 



280 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Italy. But French occupation shut out Italian posses- 
sion. 

The inevitable, however, was to come in spite of the 
Emperor Napoleon. It was, indeed, to come because of 
him. The defeat of Austria in 1866, the formation of the 
North German Confederation that same year, and the mas- 
terly methods by which Bismarck made Prussia the leading 
power in Europe, wounded the pride of France, and forced 
Napoleon to attempt the crippling of Germany. He did 
this in his customary underhanded way. His agents 
sought, by stirring up the Eastern neighbors of Russia, 
to so occupy the Czar as to keep him from interference in 
the West. Then he tried to bind Italy and Austria to 
France in a triple alliance against Prussia ; but though it 
came to nothing, both France and Napoleon believed that 
the nation could, if need be, meet and defeat Germany 
single-handed. So when, in 1869, Spain, distracted by 
domestic troubles, offered its vacant throne to a German 
prince. Napoleon and the French government declared the 
negotiation a German plot ; and the Emperor ordered his 
minister at Berlin to demand from King William of Prussia 
that his relative, the German prince, should never accept 
the offer of the Spanish throne. 

King William, of course, refused. He declared he had 
nothing to say in the matter, and did not propose to mix 
up in the affair. Thus forced into action by the public 
sentiment of France, which seemed to demand that a stop 
should be put to Germany's growing power. Napoleon 
could not control the spirit he himself had raised ; and 
weakly yielding to the popular cry, on the nineteenth of 
July, 1870, he declared war against Germany. 



WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 28 1 

It was not really so much the public sentiment of France 
that brought about this crisis as of the French army and 
the insistent people of Paris, perpetually dissatisfied and 
forever creating some new excitement. They quite over- 
ruled the soberer judgment of France, which already, by a 
growing minority, was criticising and opposing the disas- 
trous designs of Napoleon. 

" On to Berlin ! " rang the cry ; and the armies of both 
nations pushed east and west to the frontiers. The cam- 
paign that followed was brief, one-sided, and decisive. Ger- 
many, for the first time fighting as a united nation, was 
victorious from the start, thanks to the effective measures 
of Bismarck and the masterly generalship of Von Moltke. 
The great army upon which Napoleon relied to conquer 
Prussia was mostly on paper ; the million men he had ex- 
pected to lead dwindled to less than two hundred and fifty 
thousand ; and if ever an army showed " unpreparedness " 
it was that with which the Emperor Napoleon in 1870 set 
out to face the perfectly equipped German army of four 
hundred thousand men. 

The issue was never in doubt : from the battle of Worth, 
on the sixth of August, 1870, to the surrender at Sedan, on 
the second of September, victory was always with the Ger- 
mans. Napoleon was sent as a prisoner to the German 
castle at Wilhelmshoe ; and two days after, on the fourth • 
of September, 1870, his empire fell, his ambitious empress 
was fleeing to England, and for the third time the French 
Republic was proclaimed. 

" Down with the Empire ! Long live the Republic ! " 
shouted the same fickle multitude that had cried " On to 
Berlin!" and "Long live the Emperor!" but two months 



282 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

before ; and then, speedily, the republic itself was fighting 
for life. The German army advanced on Paris ; the city 
was defended by the volunteers with a resistance that sur- 
prised the German invaders. For four months the German 
besiegers were held at bay ; the German demands for sur- 
render were refused ; and not until two French armies of 
re-enforcement and relief were overthrown did the brave 
defenders of Paris yield to the inevitable, and surrender to 
the German besiegers on the twenty-eighth of January, 
1 87 1. And thus fell the Empire of Napoleon the Little. 

Meantime France's necessity was Italy's opportunity. 
German victories called the . French garrison from Rome ; 
and when Sedan toppled over Napoleon, the army of Victor 
Emmanuel assaulted and captured "the imperial city;" the 
secular power of the Pope was abolished ; and Rome, by a 
vote of one hundred and thirty thousand to fifteen hundred, 
united itself to the kingdom of Italy, of which, since the 
first of July, 1 871, it has been the capital. 

The overthrow of Napoleon cemented a still stronger 
nationality. Above the renewed patriotism of the Mar- 
seillaise swelled the deeper and ever-growing volume of 
the " Watch on the Rhine," as the sons of the Fatherland 
avenged in 1870 the disaster of 1807, and the son of Queen 
Louise of Prussia held in captivity the person and the pal- 
ace of the nephew of the man who had humiliated his 
mother. And in that captured palace at Versailles, on the 
eighteenth of January, 1870, in the presence of the sover- 
eign princes and the representatives of the free cities of 
Germany, William, king of Prussia, was proclaimed and 
crowned William L, Emperor of Germany, and German 
unity had been effected at last. 



WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 283 

But German unity was born almost in the throes of 
French anarchy. Defeated, dispirited, and crushed, France, 
through its veteran patriot, Thiers, on the twenty-sixth of 
February, 1871, agreed to the peace of Versailles, as im- 
posed by the imperious Bismarck. By this she surrendered 
to Germany the Rhine provinces of Alsace and Lorraine 
(five thousand square miles of territory and a million and a 
half inhabitants), and agreed to pay to Germany one billion 
dollars as indemnity for making war. This peace was rati- 
fied on the tenth of May following, by the treaty of Frank- 
fort on the Main, by which, as the results of the Franco- 
German war of 1870, the military power of France was 
destroyed, a new western boundary for Germany was forced 
from France, and the political unity of Germany was ac- 
knowledged and realized. 

Before all this was completed, however, anarchy and ter- 
ror once more held the unfortunate city of Paris in their grip. 
On the eighteenth of March, 1871, the agitators, radicals, 
revolutionists, and socialists in Paris denied the new 
republic's right to surrender, and barricading the city, 
declared the rule of the Commune — the people — estab- 
lishing on the ruin of the empire the rule of the armed 
mob, which very nearly desolated the beautiful city, and 
was only suppressed on the twenty-eighth of May by the 
bombardment, assault, and capture of the city by the com- 
bined forces of the army of the republic and her German 
conquerors. 

Upon this final overthrow, the third Republic of France 
rose to power. The veteran Thiers, patriot, and firm oppo- 
nent of Napoleon, was elected president ; and the nation set 
itself so nobly and heroically to keep the treaty with Ger- 



284 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

many, that, to the astonishment of the world, before the 
time Hmit fixed by the treaty, the whole of the vast obliga- 
tions to Germany had been fulfilled, and " the heel of the 
conqueror " was removed from French territory. It was 
another instance of the indomitable will of the people, so 
often displayed in the vigorous Nineteenth Century. 

The downfall of Napoleon, the rise of the French Re- 
public, the establishment of the German Empire, and the 
unity of England, well characterized by an English observer 
as "the astonishing events of 1870," affected the whole of 
Europe, and changed the relations that had been so long 
based upon rivalry and antagonisms to a condition of " pro- 
found peace" — a peace which continued for years in 
Europe, and led all nations to acknowledge the leadership 
and masterly ability of the great man of the age, Bismarck, 
the power behind the throne in Germany. 

This remarkable man — the creator of German unity — 
applied himself to the work of making Germany strong and 
great as well as united. 

"The unity of Germany," he had declared in 1862, "is 
to be brought about, not by speeches nor by the votes of 
majorities, but by blood and iron." 

Proceeding upon that "stalwart" and often terrible creed 
of power by force, Bismarck had overturned European 
politics. He established the German empire "under the 
military predominance of Prussia ; " he made Germany the 
leading power of Europe; because of his methods, the Napo- 
leonic Empire had been finally overthrown, Italy was united, 
and the temporal power of the Pope destroyed ; the first 
enduring republic in France had been established, and the 
foreign policy of Europe completely altered ; methods and 



WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 285 

systems of war were changed ; while, because of the very- 
force that Bismarck had proclaimed as necessary to the de- 
fence and protection of nations, peace rather than war has 
been adopted as the thing to strive for ; and public senti- 
ment, educated by representative assemblies and the power 
of the press, has to a great extent, as Professor Seignobos 
declares, "paralyzed the personal will of sovereigns and 
ministers, and put more pressure on governments to keep 
them from war." 

In September, 1872, the Emperors of Germany, Austria, 
and Russia with their ministers met at Berlin, and pledged 
themselves to maintain the peace of Europe, and especially 
to keep France from war. 

" Europe recognizes the German Empire as the bulwark 
of general peace," Bismarck declared ; and in thus isolating 
France and England from the rest of Europe, the great 
chancellor displayed his ability, statesmanship, and power. 

France, however, though storing up a sleeping vengeance 
against her conqueror, Germany, needed all her strength to 
rebuild and strengthen her own edifice without seeking a 
new war ; and England, great at home and abroad, had little 
wish to mix up in the confusing caldron of European poli- 
tics. In commerce and industry Great Britain, in 1870, 
ruled supreme. Under the lead of Gladstone, peace was 
the main object of the United Kingdom, — peace and com- 
mercial development ; and he who has been called " the 
greatest living master of finance," safely steered his country 
through all the dangers of home and foreign disturbance to 
the proud position of the leading force in the Christianizing 
and civilizing of the world. 

Of course, good Americans may be inclined to dispute 



286 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

this pre-eminence ; but, like France, the Republic of the 
United States had too much to occupy herself at home in 
healing the wounds and covering the scars of civil war to 
assume any position of leadership beyond her ocean borders. 
These borders in 1870 were stronger and better de- 
veloped than ever. The supremacy of the American mer- 
chant marine had, indeed, been lost in the waste of civil 
war; but the internal improvement and domestic growth of 
the great American Republic were astonishing. In railways 
and manufactures, in crops and productions, this growth was 
steady and enormous, while the commercial interests at 
home and abroad, after the close of the civil war, increased 
mightily. In the five years between 1870 and 1875 the ex- 
ports and imports more than doubled in value over those of 
the five years between i860 and 1865 ; in each case — ex- 
ports as well as imports — the totals crowded the limit of 
three billions of dollars ; while, for the corresponding periods 
of five comparative years, immigration into the United 
States increased nearly threefold — the total of " new 
citizens" from abroad between 1870 and 1875 reaching 
nearly to two millions. 

Guided by the misfortunes of the United States because 
of uncertain confederation, state sovereignty, and diverse 
laws, the new Dominion of Canada centralized its power 
in its parliament at Ottawa, which set the limits of the 
duties and powers of the different Provincial assemblies. 
At the head of the Dominion stood the governor-general, 
appointed for a term of five years by the queen. But 
the governor-general is scarcely a political power ; he can 
do nothing without the consent of his council, which, in 
its turn, is responsible to the people ; senators and judges 



WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 287 

are appointed for life ; and Canada's provincial government, 
thanks to the American Revolution and England's increase 
in wisdom, is the most stable and nearest perfection of any 
possible colonial government. It is, indeed, but a short 
step from this confederation to national independence, 
should the Dominion ever desire it. 

On the southern side of the American border the repub- 
lics of Central and South America were slowly feeling their 
way to stability. Security comes haltingly when passion 
is mistaken for patriotism, and the countrymen of Bolivar 
and San Martin had not yet schooled themselves in the 
calmer methods of liberty. Political and sectarian differ- 
ences provoked both feud and faction, and the ruling 
power was not always the recognized one ; revolts and 
revolutions were frequent ; and the growth of the southern 
republics in self-government was retarded by the atmos- 
phere of passion and the environments of suspicion, in 
which the twin oak-trees of liberty and law can never 
flourish sturdily. 

The foremost South American of this period of unrest 
was Domingo Sarmiento of Buenos Ayres. Realizing that 
the greatest civilizer was education, and that upon the 
future rather than the past depended the progress of his 
race, this philanthropic statesman devoted his life to eman- 
cipating South America from ignorance, superstition, and 
greed. It was not an easy task. Throughout South Amer- 
ica presidents were dictators, and dictators were tyrants ; 
but Sarmiento, through many discouragements, defeats, and 
dangers, held steadily to his purpose. Envy and slander 
could not dull his enthusiasm ; exile and injustice could 
not stay his endeavors. The Argentine Republic at last 



288 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

elected him its president in 1865, and his administration 
of four years is known as the "golden age" of Argentina, 

The other South American republics in time followed 
his methods, if not his lead ; and, gradually, the " real army 
of liberation" — the farmers, the artisans, and the school- 
masters of South America — began the thankless but glori- 
ous task of redeeming and uniting the races which Spain 
for so many years had held in thrall. 

In this enfranchisement, Anglo-Saxon and German en- 
terprise, as well as native energy, has borne a mighty 
share ; and Wheelwright and Meiggs and Lowe, leaders 
in material and industrial growth, are more to be remem- 
bered as benefactors of South America than Francia, 
Lopez, and Rosas, — tyrants and dictators, — whose selfish 
ambitions well nigh crippled the progress of their home- 
land. 

In Mexico, the northern outpost of Spanish America, 
three hundred revolutions tell the stormy story of an 
advance toward true national freedom, which began at last, 
when, in 1874, the amended liberal constitution was ac- 
cepted as the organic law of the republic, and the rise of 
Porfirio Diaz led the way to order and prosperity. 

Brazil, a sort of absolute constitutional empire, if one can 
understand so manifest an anomaly, was held in peace and 
power by the wise judgment and liberal rule of that bene- 
ficent monarch, Dom Pedro II., who in 1871 made his em- 
pire a free nation by the emancipation of every child born 
of slave parents and of all slaves held by the state. In 
this philanthropic advance Dom Pedro wisely recognized 
and accepted the liberal spirit of his day, even though his 
wisdom led to his own undoing ; for it was decreed by fate 



i 



WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 289 

that neither king nor emperor should long exist in the 
liberty-loving air of South America. 

The liberty-loving air of America was furnishing strength- 
ening ozone to other struggling lands. When, in 1835, 
the Dutch burghers, farmers, or "boers," of Cape Colony, 
dissatisfied with the liberal policy of Great Britain towards 
the black nations of Africa, went northward on their " exo- 
dus," or "great trek" as it was called, they laid the foun- 
dations of the Dutch repubhcs of Africa known as the 
Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In 1852 the Boers 
of the Transvaal secured their independence, and two years 
later the Orange Free State was established in its separate 
nationality. Both, however, were slave-holding republics, 
torn with dissensions, and so hostile to the growth of British 
power in South Africa that, finally, the peace of that whole 
" New World " was threatened, industry suffered, and the 
slave-trade flourished. At last England, in 1876, protested 
and finally acted ; but the sturdy stand for independence 
and nationality, even in the midst of feud and faction, 
showed how deeply the love of liberty was ingrained in the 
Dutch nature, which, stubbornly independent, has done so 
much for the personality of nations and of men. 

The persistence of Europe, however, was doing more in 
Africa than schooling the Boers in independence ; it was 
imlocking the mystery of the Dark Continent, and preparing 
the way for the regeneration and development of that un- 
known corner of the world. When David Livingstone, in 
1856, had emerged from the unknown after an absence of 
sixteen years and a tramp of eleven thousand miles, he 
brought with him the key to Africa. For his report opened 
the eyes of the world to the commercial value of Africa as 



290 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

well as its spiritual needs, and explorer and missionary fol- 
lowed the path that Livingstone had blazed ; Du Chaillu 
the Frenchman ; Burton, Speke, and Grant, the English- 
men ; Rohefs and Von der Decken the Germans ; Baker and 
Walker and Reade the Englishmen ; Schweinfurth the Rus- 
sian ; Mohr and Nachtigal the Germans ; Stanley the Ameri- 
can ; De Brazza the Italian ; and Serpa Pinto the Portuguese, 
— had, in the twenty years between Livingstone's first re- 
ports and his own death "in the harness," discovered, ex- 
plored, and opened the way for commerce into the long 
locked regions of the oldest of civilized and latest of regen- 
erated lands. From the days of the Phoenician explorers, 
seven hundred years before Christ, to those of Livingstone 
and Stanley, nineteen hundred years after Christ, Africa 
had remained a mystery; but by 1875 the genius and ro- 
mance of exploration, pushed forward by the restless energy 
of the Nineteenth Century, had opened the country to the 
eyes of the world, and the story of exploration grew into 
the story of occupation. By that date it was estimated 
that the twelve million square miles of African area sup- ' 1 

ported a population of at least two hundred millions of 
people ; and the nations of Europe disputed with the fol- 
lowers of Mahomet for occupation, interest, and influence. 

As the disappearance and loss of Livingstone in Africa 
led Stanley on his relief expedition, and opened a new era 
in African development, so in the Tartarean darkness and 
cold around the Pole, the loss of Sir John Franklin, in 
1845, and the forty relief expeditions sent out by England 
and America to seach for and succor him, led to the more ^ 

determined exploration of the northern ice-bound seas, • 

The introduction of steam into navigation rendered this ] 



WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 201 

task somewhat easier; and the English expedition of 1875, 
when, with two powerful screw-steamers, Captain Nares 
forced his way through the ice floes to the very edge of 
the paleocrystic sea, and stormed the barriers of the vast 
Polar pack at the very highest northern altitudes yet 
reached by civilized man, was the advance of that modern 
polar discovery which, before the close of the Nineteenth 
Century, had very nearly forced the secrets of the Pole. 
So, too, the famous expedition of the " Challenger," under 
the same valiant Captain Nares, between the years 1872 
and 1874, pushed into the lifeless regions of the Antarctic, 
and "challenged" its mysteries. The close of the third 
quarter of the investigating Nineteenth Century marked a 
mighty increase in the world's knowledge of its own hidden 
places and its own vast possibilities. 

What exploration was doing for geographical and an- 
thropological knowledge, science was equalling. By 1875 
the results of seventy years of research, investigation, 
effort, and ingenuity, were telling mightily in production 
and improved methods. The two greatest forces of modern 
civilization, steam and electricity, had made and were mak- 
ing enormous strides towards practical perfection. Land 
and sea were crossed and zigzagged with railway tracks and 
steamship routes. The carrying facilities of the world 
were vastly increased ; and the telegraph system had grown 
to such useful proportions that, in the year 1870 alone, 
nearly fifty million ''telegrams" were sent over the wires 
and cables of this wonderful electrical marvel. 

In other lines of human achievement the three-score 
years and ten of the century's life had wrought revolutions 
as notable and as valuable as were those which had remod- 



292 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

elled politics and remade states. It literature and art, in 
science and research, in learning and enlightenment, in a 
growing familiarity with great questions, and a deeper con- 
sciousness of vast possibilities, the whole world was broad- 
ening into a more intelligent productiveness, learning more 
clearly the how and the why, as well as the where and the 
when, of many a great world-problem or a long-hidden mys- 
tery. Nineteenth Century science has proved the "open 
sesame " to many a darkened treasure-cave. 

In 1870 more than one fearless investigator stood before 
the sealed door of the cave with the ''open sesane " on his 
lips. Darwin, with his bold "Origin of Species," and still 
bolder " Descent of Man ; " Spencer, with his " Sociology " 
and his modern system of philosophy ; Tyndall, with his 
wonderful studies in heat and light, — actually stormed the 
treasure-house of nature, and "looted" it of mysteries and 
facts. In France, Renan, breaking away from what he 
deemed "the barrenness of the scholastic method," was 
startling the conventional, and upsetting old theories with 
a vigor and realism that were almost brutal in their bril- 
liancy ; while the struggle for political and national unity 
in Germany increased the numbers and influence of the 
students and thinkers of the Fatherland, to whose labors 
the people of Germany, loyal to their own, responded with 
a growing respect and a deepening conviction. In every 
civilized land the years between 1870 and 1875 displayed 
not only a growth of intellectual vigor in the producers, 
but a corresponding growth of appreciation in the people. 
It was in 1872 that Wagner settled at Bayreuth, and there 
founded the theatre in which he broke away from old 
methods, and revolutionized the dramatic music of the 



WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF. 293 

world; it was in 1876 that Emerson published his poems 
"Brahma" and "The Over Soul" — so packed with 
thought, as Professor Bates observes, "that to the 
thoughtless they seem nonsense;" and it was in 1873 
that Carlyle, long neglected as a "freak," was sufficiently 
recognized by his contemporaries as to warrant the publi- 
cation of his complete works ; it was in 1873 that Walt 
Whitman, invalided by his self-sacrificing hospital work 
during the Civil War, retired in poverty to Camden, " will- 
ing," as he said, "to wait to be understood." And yet 
these four "freaks," or "fanatics," as unthinking people 
called them, are to-day acknowledged as moving powers in 
modern thought. More than any other man did Wagner 
directly influence "the music of the future;" Whitman, 
so John Burroughs declares, will be "an enormous feeder 
to the coming poetic genius of his country ; " while, as for 
those "twins of thought," Carlyle and Emerson, it may 
to-day be accepted that they were, as Mr. Garnett declares, 
" the two men who had the largest share in forming the 
minds from which the succeeding generation was to take 
its complexion." "Rarely," he adds "have nations been 
more fortunate in their instructors than the two great 
English-speaking peoples during the age of Carlyle and 
Emerson." 

"A man perfects himself by vv^orking," said Carlyle ; 
"foul jungles are cleared away; fair seed fields rise in- 
stead, and stately cities ; and, withal, the man himself 
fast ceases to be jungle and foul unwholesome desert 
thereby." 

There was inspiration even for the thoughtless in this, 
as there was in the simple but stirring lines of Emerson : 



294 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

" The men are ripe of Saxon kind 
To build an equal state, — 
To take the stature from the mind, 
And make of duty fate. 

For He that worketh high and wise, 

Nor pauses in his plan, 
Will take the sun out of the skies 

Ere freedom out of man." 

In the heart of Europe, men not altogether of "Saxon 
kind," — a sturdy nation of mountaineers and farmers, — 
were holding their own in 1870, and "perfecting them- 
selves by working," were also making "of duty, fate," as 
they set an example in conservative freedom. "It would," 
says Professor Siegnobos, "be a mistake to measure the 
interest of Switzerland's history by the size of her territory. 
This little country fills a large place in the history of the 
existing institutions of Europe." The cantons of Switzer- 
land, indeed, furnish a practical example of what, in a land 
girdled by absolutism, or bordered by insurrection, popular 
sovereignty can accomplish ; for, through all the wars and 
revolutions, the overthrow of states, and the fall of dynas- 
ties since 18 14, the Swiss people have steadily held their 
own as the oldest existing republic. In 1874 a new and 
yet more liberal constitution was adopted by this liberty- 
loving people, which led to something unheard of in 
Europe — direct government by the citizens of the repub- 
lic ; a distinct advance ; for, as Professor Siegnobos de- 
clares, " no civilized people had yet gone so far in this 
path." 

Not even free America ; for there, in 1870 and 1875, the 
problem of reconstruction still hampered the work of politi- 



WHEN THE WORLD READJUSTED ITSELF, 295 

cal enfranchisement, and created for over eight years — 
from 1868 to 1876 — what Doctor Edward Channing char- 
acterizes as "3. period of poHtical uncertainty." Grant, the 
great soldier of the Civil War, had, in 1868, been elected 
president of the United States ; he had been re-elected in 
1872 ; and though he gave a vigorous and often statesman- 
hke administration, the speculative spirit was abroad, and 
the growth of great fortunes, quickly made, and often as 
quickly dissipated, introduced a new and serious feature 
into American life — the money -power. Cities, increasing 
rapidly, were careless of their finances, and greed and 
corruption tainted many a fair name. Unwise and short- 
sighted policy in the efforts to make men out of the 
enfranchised race led to persecution in the South and 
unreasoning criticism in the North, so that injustice and 
disorder had frequently to be met and punished. 

All reformatory work, however, is slow, and reconstruc- 
tion and security had to struggle with terrorism and fac- 
tion ; but, gradually, a better state of things was evolved, 
and by 1875 the nation had not only accepted but indorsed 
the methods for cementing anew the lasting union of the 
American Republic. 

Abroad, the republic grew in strength and importance ; 
and when by arbitration, in 1871, the Treaty of Washington 
amicably settled the unforgotten grudge against England 
for her open aid. to the Confederate States, and through 
the Emperor of Germany, the northwestern boundary dis- 
pute with England was settled in favor of the United 
States, the world awoke to the real importance and strength 
of the great new power across the western sea. 

Thus were the people of Saxon blood — the three great 



296 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTtfRY. 

Anglo-Germanic nations of the world — drawing nearer to- 
gether, Bismarck, the guiding hand of Germany, the typical 
man of this age of union through strength, was instrumental 
in thus arbitrating the disputes of England and America, 
while, at the same time, unifying and strengthening the 
Empire by his process of national evolution. That process 
led in 1872 to a direct and open rupture with the Roman 
Catholic Church, a comphcated struggle between the be- 
lievers in Bismarck and the followers of the Pope, known 
now in German history as " the Culturkampf " — the fight 
for civilization. 

But in 1875 Bismarck won ; for in that year he declared 
that his "armor was complete," and by a union of forces 
with the liberals and the progressives he turned the tide 
his way, and organized the new empire on the broad national 
lines he had himself desired. " Bismarck's Party," as his 
opponents called the workers for real German unity, 
triumphed, and the foundations of empire were well and 
strongly laid by the strongest man of his day — the master 
mind of that Age of Unity — the decade between 1870 
and 1880. 




§1 

Q I 

< S 

3 ^ 

■"J < 

< H 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER " OF THE CENTURY. 
{From i8-j3 to 1880.) 

TTO VON BISMARCK, Chancellor and Prince of 



the Empire, — he had been made Prince Bismarck in 
1 87 1, — fought and won in 1875 his struggle for civiliza- 
tion — the Culturkampf. He had firmly established the 
Empire, over-riding sometimes the desires and wishes of 
his "imperial master," William the Emperor. Things 
seemed to be going his way ; his statesmanship and power 
were recognized even by his opponents and enemies ; and he 
was easily, as the third quarter of the Nineteenth Century 
opened, the foremost man in the world. In spite of a cen- 
tury of democratic progress, it seemed as if absolutism and 
the one-man power had again fastened its firm grip on the 
world, and that German unity and nationality seemed to 
have been accomplished at the expense of German inde- 
pendence and manhood. 

There were, even in Germany, those who held this view ; 
and those who desired equality and freedom quite as much 
as German nationality began to agitate and organize. 
While Bismarck was waging his "Culturkampf" he was 
shrewd enough to see that the friends of freedom and 
equality were good allies for his side ; and he so favored for 
the moment the Liberal and Progressive parties, with whom 
he had really little sympathy, and even the Socialists whom 

297 



298 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

he hated, as to give him strength and victory. But, when 
he had triumphed, he made few concessions to his hberal 
allies ; he rejected their demands for political power, 
strengthened the army, and passed stringent laws against 
all "opponents of the government." 

This action especially displeased the radical reformers of 
Germany, who were studying the affairs of the world, and 
believed that the equality and freedom of man was the 
spirit of the age. The SociaUsts of Germany, largely drawn 
from the working classes, under the guidance of able leaders, 
strengthened their organization, and boldly set themselves 
to fight the all powerful chancellor and prince. When he 
wished to check their agitation by laws against the liberty 
of the press, the usually willing parliament, or "Reichstag," 
of Germany would not agree ; but when some hot -heads 
and fanatics of the radical Socialists twice attempted the 
life of the old emperor, the opinions of the Reichstag 
changed, and Bismarck was able to get the upper hand 
again, and secure the passage of strong laws against " the 
subversive efforts of the Social Democrats." This was in 
1878; and for a time, at least, the progress of socialism was 
checked. Then it was that Bismarck broke off from his 
liberal connections, and joined hands with the conservative 
and reactionary forces, even going back with them to certain 
of the old traditions of the despotic kings of Prussia, " assist- 
ing" rather than elevating the "most numerous and least 
instructed class," and endeavoring to make a paternal 
rather than a self-helpful government. 

In England, also, at this time, a similar reactionary policy 
seemed to be in the ascendant. The Liberal party, under the 
lead of Gladstone, lost for a time its control ; the Conserv- 



THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF THE CENTURY. 299 

ative party, with its brilliant but unreliable chief, Disraeli 
— known, after 1876, as Lord Beaconsfield — came into 
power, and sought to establish three prime factors, hardly 
consistent in the democracy into which Great Britain had 
at last grown. These were the throne, the house of lords, 
and the Established Church. Disraeli admired Bismarck, 
and wished to play a similar part in English history. So 
he set out to accomplish this by increasing the national 
power of England, and, "in the name of British honor," to 
adopt a warlike policy which should undo the popular 
reforms of Gladstone. 

To divert attention from home matters, he followed the 
course of the two Napoleons, and sought for glory abroad. 
This he found in strengthening the union of the British col- 
onies with the crown, expanding the borders of the kingdom, 
and becoming head nurse to the " sick man " of Europe. 

His first step was to unite the parent nation and all its 
dependencies in one mighty and solid empire. Gladstone's 
policy tended toward a practical if not absolute separation 
of the colonies from the mother country, without affording 
a chance for "the American blunder of 1776." Disraeli's 
policy was to block all such attempts toward colonial inde- 
pendence by a unity of interests and a strengthening of 
ties. . To accompHsh this, he sent the Prince of Wales on 
a visit to India in 1875 ; and in 1877 he had the queen 
duly proclaimed Victoria, " by the grace of God, Queen of 
Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India," Thus 
did he attempt the Bismarck r61e, and establish the " unifi- 
cation " of England, while, by a vigorous and aggressive 
foreign policy, he gained the good-will of the colonies, and 
enlarged the borders of the empire. 



300 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

In one section of the vast empire, however, there was 
perpetual unrest. The "vigorous policy" of England, 
from the days of Strongbow and the Geraldines, hundreds 
of years back, had never been "vigorous" to the end, if 
absolute conquest were desired. Neither Henry the 
Eighth, Elizabeth, nor Cromwell, the most " vigorous " of 
English "pacificators," completed the work they had 
begun ; and Ireland, the western outpost of the home king- 
dom, gave to each new generation and to each change of 
ministry an unsettled problem. The successor of Emmet 
and O'Connell in the seventies was an Anglo-American 
brought up in Ireland, Charles Stewart Parnell, of County 
Wicklow. He took up, in 1875, the cause of Irish inde- 
pendence, and in 1879 was made leader of the Irish Home 
Rule party, pledged to the blockade of all English affairs, 
in and out of Parliament, until Ireland's wrongs had been 
recognized, and the Irish question settled. 

A defensive association, first started among the Irish 
peasants, was revived in 1877 as the " Irish Land League." 
In 1879 this had so grown as to extend over all Ireland, 
and was intended to limit the powers of the landlords in 
Ireland, and make of the peasants and farmers small landed 
proprietors, who were advised to stick to their farms on 
their own terms of rental, and not to give up until driven 
away by force. The Land League promised to stand 
behind the people, and help them fight the landlords. 

Very much of the money-help needed to support the 
Land League and strengthen the Irish cause came in the 
way of great contributions from Irish sympathizers in 
America, who might have been better employed in making 
themselves real Americans. In that rapidly growing 



THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF THE CENTURY. 3OI 

country the imperilled union was again firmly established. 
Since 1871 all the States were represented in Congress; 
and by 1876, the centennial year, these States numbered 
thirty-eight, while the western territories, fast filling up 
with a sturdy and thrifty population, were also pressing on 
to statehood. 

With wealth and power and a mighty area of land ; with 
a steadily increasing population and a vast showing in 
national and intellectual progress, — the repubHc of the 
United States of America, after one hundred years of life, 
had triumphantly disproved the prophecy of that positive 
old despot, Frederick the Great, who, at the close of the 
American Revolution, had declared that no single republic 
could be held together in a territory so vast as that which 
extended from Maine to Georgia. 

" It will break into sections or give place to a monarchy," 
said the great Frederick, who, even though king " by 
divine right," was not, you see, infallible, and did not, as 
he thought, know everything. 

In 1876, after a century of struggle, effort, and achieve- 
ment, the United States of America had not split up into 
sections, and had not set up a king. Instead, the world 
saw, on the western shores of the Atlantic, a mighty 
republic, the home of liberty, equality, and fraternity, a 
land of peace and plenty, a monument of national success, 
which in that centennial year sent out an invitation to all 
the nations of the earth to come across the seas, and help 
it celebrate its hundredth birthday. 

" The world and his wife " accepted the cordial invitation ; 
and from the tenth of May till the tenth of November, 
1876, there was held in the city of Philadelphia, where the 



302 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Declaration of Independence was signed, one of the great 
international exhibitions of the Nineteenth Century. 

It was the largest of the six International Exhibitions 
held since (and including) the first London Exhibition of 
185 1. The buildings and grounds covered sixty acres; 
there were sixty thousand exhibitors ; and, during the one 
hundred and fifty-nine days of the exhibition, it was seen 
by ten million visitors. It did much to acquaint the world 
with the resources and possibilities of the great Republic ; 
it did more towards bringing together the scattered peoples 
of the world, and increasing that spirit of neighborliness 
which, in spite of political selfishness, wars, and feuds, is 
still resistlessly bringing nearer the federation of the world, 
while, best of all, it cemented in still stronger bonds the 
reunited sections of a once threatened Union. 

"The people of Montgomery, Alabama, the birthplace 
of the Confederate government, through its city council," 
so ran the message sent on July fourth, " extend a cordial 
and fraternal greeting to all the people of the United 
States, with an earnest prayer for the perpetuation of 
concord and brotherly feelings throughout the land." 

And, across the sea, from the grand-nephew and suc- 
cessor of that great Frederick who could see no endur- 
ing union for the Republic of 1776, came a significant 
greeting for the same glorious anniversary. 

It was from " William, by the grace of God, Emperor of 
Germany," etc., to Ulysses S. Grant, President of the 
United States. 

" Great and good friend," it said, " it has been vouch- 
safed to you to celebrate the centennial festival of the day 
upon which the great Republic over which you preside 



THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF THE CENTURY. 303 

entered the rank of independent nations. The purposes 
of its founders have by a wise application of the teacliings 
of the history of the foundations of nations, and with in- 
sight into the distant future, been realized by a develop- 
ment without a parallel. To congratulate you and the 
American people upon the occasion affords me so much 
the greater pleasure, because, since the treaty of friendship 
which my ancestor of glorious memory, King Frederick II., 
who now rests with God, concluded with the United States, 
undisturbed friendship has continually existed between 
Germany and America, and has been developed and 
strengthened by the ever-increasing importance of their 
mutual relations, and by an intercourse becoming more 
and more fruitful in every domain of commerce and sci- 
ence. That the welfare of the United States and the 
friendship of the two countries may continue to increase 
is my sincere desire and confident hope." 

And it was countersigned "Von Bismarck," — the man 
of "blood and iron," the man who had established and 
would maintain nationality by force ; the man who scorned 
republicanism and detested democracy. The prophecy of 
Frederick the Great had indeed been sufficiently disproved 
by the message of his imperial descendant. 

" Fruitful in every domain of commerce and science," — 
thus had run the greeting of the Emperor of Germany. 
The year 1876 was indeed this; three-quarters of a cen- 
tury had culminated in a marvellous display of developed 
energies, and the " miracles of science," by which all the 
world was affected, and in whose wonder-working all na- 
tions had a share, seemed especially traceable to the 
achievements of American thought and effort. 



304 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

"The' realm of scientific investigation," so said the Lon- 
don Times of that day, " is actively occupied at present by 
our American cousins, and with results simply astounding." 
It was at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia that 
these marvellous possibilities were first fully realized, and 
that those "four new wonders of the world," — the electric 
light, the telephone, the phonograph, and the microphone, 
were either practically demonstrated or positively out- 
outlined. Inexhaustible light, instantaneous communica- 
tion of sound, the preservation of actual speech, the 
intensifying of almost inaudible sounds — these were the 
" four new wonders " that were given to the world between 
1875 and 1880; and their practical utilization revolution- 
ized the methods of world-communication, and displayed 
the electricity which 1800 knew only as a toy, as the real 
and coming force of the world. And for much of this 
discovery, development, and adaptation, America is re- 
sponsible. 

In something more than material affairs was the world 
making progress in those "three-quarter " years. In 1875 
France adopted a new constitution, admirably suited to a 
people of the peculiar nature of the French. It was a con- 
servative compromise between republicanism and royalty — 
or the organization, as it has been termed, of a constitutional 
monarchy, in which a president elected for seven years 
holds the position of a constitutional king, acting through 
a ministry appointed by himself, but personally responsible 
to the representative assembly of the republic. 

In 1878 Americanized Japan, which had, only as late as 
1 87 1, abolished its old feudalism of the dark ages, took 
steps to make itself, like England, a constitutional mon- 



THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF THE CENTURY. 305 

archy, establishing local elective assemblies, with rights of 
petition^ extending the franchise to all men over twenty-one 
who could pay a land-tax of five dollars, and set about se- 
curing for itself constitutional freedom, a national assembly, 
and the highest forms of civilized government. 

In 1876 Spain, resting from the exhausting struggle of 
factional strife, followed the lead of Cavour and Bismarck, 
and declared for "the Constitutional Unity of Spain." 
The desires of Castelar the republican were not suited to 
unrepublican Spain ; the military dictatorship of the sol- 
dier Serrano pleased neither republican nor monarchist. 
A king was called for, but he must be neither despot nor 
feudal lord ; he must be a cofistitutional and a liberal king. 
So, following the spirit of the age, a constitution was 
adopted in 1876. A king was selected in the person of the 
son of the exiled Isabella ; and Alfonso XII., recognized as 
the constitutional king, ascended the throne of Spain as the 
head of the new condition of affairs. Portugal, too, in 
1877, achieved a conservative regeneration of its govern- 
ment, extending the right of suffrage and permitting the 
representation of minorities. But the long-considered 
union with Spain has not yet been effected. 

Electoral reforms and constitutional methods also, about 
this same time, went into effect in aristocratic Austria, 
where Bismarck's policy of nationalism was being attempted 
with the rival and warring elements of a factional and 
divided people. In 1 8y6, however, the eastern borders of 
Austria were disturbed by a determined effort on the part 
of the Christian dependencies of Turkey to break away 
from their Mohammedan masters. The " Sick Man of 
Europe" began to grow very sick indeed about 1875. 



306 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 

The Turkish debt grew larger, money became scarcer, and 
the " Sublime Porte " (that odd title of a gate on a dock 
which has been taken by Turkey as its official name) was 
practically bankrupt. An increase of taxes roused certain 
of the Christian departments of Turkey to rebellion. In- 
surrection first broke out in 1875, in Herzegovina, one of 
the northwestern border provinces of the Sultan. In May, 
1876, the peasants of Bulgaria revolted, and the powers 
of Europe demanded that Turkey reform her ways. Mean- 
time, the Turks themselves were splitting into parties. A 
new generation of progressive Turks, popularly known as 
" Young Turkey," declared that the Sultan was respon- 
sible to the people for his actions ; and if he did not reign 
legally, he should be deposed. This alarmed the Sultan. 
He made one of the leaders of the " Young Turkey " party 
grand vizier — Midhat Pasha, a man who was almost a 
statesman; and in December, 1876, a constitution, which 
was solemnly proclaimed to be " the property of all Otto- 
man subjects," was actually drafted and promulgated ! It 
provided for a cabinet and a parhament, such as the more 
progressive European nations had established, and gave to 
the Turkish empire, so it was declared, " the reign of lib- 
erty, justice, equality, and the triumph of civilization." 
It almost seemed as if the spirit of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury had penetrated even the darkness of absolute Turkey ! 

But while doing this, and attempting to put down the 
revolution in Herzegovina, the scum of the Turkish army 
was turned loose upon the rebels in Bulgaria, and a cam- 
paign of massacre followed which roused Europe and 
America to horror and protest. 

Three of the powers of Europe, — Russia, Austria, and 



THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF THE CENTURY. 307 

Germany, — after a conference at Berlin, presented a 
" memorandum " of reforms to the Sublime Porte, which 
the Sultan's council refused to accept because, so it was 
asserted, they were " contrary to the Constitution ! " Then 
Midhat Pasha was "discharged;" and as Turkey seemed 
going back to its old ways, the European powers threat- 
ened, in March, 1877, to abandon Turkey to her own 
devices, but to take from her all her Christian provinces. 

This was Russia's scheme. England, alone, objected to 
it, because it meant Russia's supremacy, and peril to Eng- 
land's possessions in the East. But, after long discussion, it 
was practically adopted ; and when Russia backed up its 
demands by a war with Turkey (in which the siege of 
Plevna in Bulgaria, in 1877, was the most important 
happening), the Sultan gave in, and by the Peace of San 
Stefano, dictated by victorious Russia and the Congress of 
Berlin, in 1878, renounced his sovereignty over hearly all 
the Christian states tributary to him in Europe. 

This Congress of Berlin, however, materially modified 
Russia's demands at San Stefano, as the dismemberment 
of Turkey there proposed seemed all too favorable to Rus- 
sia ; and Russia was, as it had been since the downfall of 
the great Napoleon, his successor as a menace to Europe. 
Prince Bismarck was president of the Congress of Berlin ; 
Beaconsfield was the English representative ; and these two 
men dominated the Congress, curbed and cut down Rus- 
sia's share in "the Turkish land-grab," and gave to Aus- 
tria the right of occupation and virtual suzerainty which 
Russia had coveted. " Young Turkey " was for the time 
defeated; and the strong man of Europe, Bismarck, the 
genius of his age, had again won a triumph in nationality, 



308 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

by fostering a union of the Christian nations of the Balkan 
Peninsula. 

" We want permission to build churches ; we want a 
bishop of our own race ; we want schools ; we want taxes 
fixed ; we do not want soldiers in our houses ! " Thus had 
run the petition addressed to western Europe by the 
Christian mountaineers of Herzegovina, who had started this 
Turkish overthrow of 1875. "I, Khame, king of the 
Bagamangwato, greet Victoria, the great Queen of the Eng- 
lish," ran the petition of the African chief to England, in 
1876. " I ask her majesty to pity me, and to hear what I 
write, quickly. The Boers are coming into my country, 
and I do not hke them. They sell us and our children. 
The custom of the Boers has always been to cause people 
to be sold, and to-day they are still selling people." 

So, from two far-separated and utterly distinct persecuted 
peoples, came the cry to Europe for relief. And Europe 
heeded it. The Christians of the Balkans were liberated ; 
and England, in 1877, annexed the Transvaal, put a stop 
to Dutch civil war in South Africa, and saved the native 
Africans from the curse of slavery. 

The Congress of Berlin, which in June, 1878, settled for 
the time all the perplexing problems of the Eastern Ques- 
tion, settled another thing for the time being. It showed 
that Germany's influence was "preponderant " in Europe. 
And in 1880 Germany was Bismarck. 

He had raised his country to its greatest height of glory ; 
he had united, developed, and advanced her from a loose 
and shifting confederacy of jealous and often warring states 
to an imperial and undivided nation ; he had defeated in 
succession Austria, France, and Russia ; he had triumphed 



THE LAST "ONE-MAN POWER" OF THE CENTURY. 309 

in the dismemberrnent of Turkey ; stamped down the rising 
threat of Socialism ; emerged victorious from his Cultur- 
kampf — his "fight for civihzation," — and in 1877, on 
the heights of the Niederwald, overlooking the redeemed 
and reconquered Rhine, where Arminius, earliest of Ger- 
man patriots, had, ages before, overthrown the legions of 
the invading Romans, he had laid the foundation of that 
glorious national monument which commemorates German 
valor, German triumph, German redemption, German unity, 
and German greatness. And in 1880 the greatest of all 
Germans, of all Europeans, indeed, was the statesman Otto 
Von Bismarck, creator of German unity. 



" Tolstoi's ^irpose is mainly to tnake 
others realize tliat religion, that Christ, is 
for this actual world here, and not for 
some potential world elsewhere. ... In 
any event, his endeavor for a right life 
cannot be forgotten. Even as a pose, if 
•we are to think so ttieanly of it as that, it 
is by far the most impressive spectacle of 
this centziry . . . . IVe miist recognize him 
as one of the greatest men of all time before 
we can measure the exieiit of his remmcia- 
tion." . . . 

William Dea?i Howells. 



THE AGE OF TOLSTOI. 

P HIL A NTHR OPY. 

(1880- 1 890.) 



COUNT TOLSTOI 

{Lyoff NikolaievicJt), 
THE REALIST OF PHILANTHROPY, 
Born Tula, Riissia, August 38, 1828. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

HOW THE WORLD BEGAN TO TRY THE GOLDEN RULE. 

{From 1880 to /88s.) 

WHILE Bismarck was cementing the foundation of 
German unity, and building the edifice of German 
power ; while the United States was working its way from 
perplexities to peace ; while England was increasing her 
power abroad, and new men and new measures were taking 
firm hold upon every nation, — civilized and uncivilized, king- 
hedged or free, — there lived in the most absolute of mod- 
ern monarchies a man destined to be the incarnation of 
conservative equality — Tolstoi' the Russian. 

A count of the empire, a soldier of Sebastopol, a man 
of wealth, position, and estate, he had been awakened, 
aroused, and moved to a higher mission by the emancipa- 
tion of the serfs of Russia in 1861. He received a vision 
of universal brotherhood ; and, returning to his estates in 
Central Russia, he devoted himself to the humanizing of 
the world, — especially of the world of Russia, as it lay 
about him. 

Count Lyon Tolstoi was what the practical politicians 
slightingly call "a literary fellow." Worse than that in 
the practical politician's eye, he wrote novels. How could 
a man who lived in fiction deal with fact .'' 

But it was the facts that really were facts that impelled 
Count Lyon Tolstoi' to write his fictions. The spirit of 

313 



314 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

the age had been the growth of nations into independence 
and union. Why should not all men be united and free ? 
this Russian dreamer asked himself. 

But ignorance can never be independent ; illiteracy can 
never achieve unity. The first step towards making men 
really men must be in education, and true education is 
based on brotherhood. So Count Lyon Tolstoi' determined 
to live as a brother among his brothers ; and, literally ac- 
cepting the words of him from whom the nineteen progres- 
sive centuries date their beginning, he took as his life-text : 
" One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." 

It was, indeed, the spirit of the age that impelled the 
Russian count to attempt the levelling of rank and caste, 
of poverty and wealth, into one universal brotherhood. It 
was in many ways a wild, impracticable, and unwise scheme ; 
for equality is not equal mathematical distribution, and 
brotherhood is not absolute hannony ; without differences 
of opinion there could be little real progress. The story 
of the Nineteenth Century has, however, proved again and 
again the truth of the Great Teacher's declaration which 
follows after the text taken by Tolstoi", " Whosoever ex- 
alteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth him- 
self shall be exalted." As Professor Lange well says : 
" Out of the humility of fidelity springs the courage of 
freedom." 

It was this humility of fidehty that led Count Tolstoi, in 
pursuance of his new theory, to live among and labor with 
his neighbors, the emancipated serfs, in equality and com- 
radeship. Eighty years of the " courage of freedom," from 
Washington to Lincoln, from Robespierre to Garibaldi, 
from Bolivar the South American to Ito the Japanese, had 



HOW THE WORLD TRIED THE GOLDEN RULE. 315 

taught the world the real meanings of the first misunder- 
stood " slogan " of French enfranchisement : " liberty, equal- 
ity, fraternity." For out of all this had come, first and 
foremost, the wisdom of unity ; and it was unity of purpose 
that was at the base of Tolstoi's plan. "He cannot admit 
in his arraignment of civilization," says Howells, " the plea 
of a divided responsibility ; he will not suffer the prince, or 
the judge, or the soldier, to shirk the consequence of what 
he officially does." An undivided responsibility is to-day 
the law for men as well as nations. 

The publication of Tolstoi's "Anna Karenina," just be- 
fore 1880, was held to be a literary event in Russia; its 
translation and appearance in Western languages, soon after 
1880, marked a new era in the world's advance ; for it was 
recognized as introducing certain new elements into the 
practical affairs of life, — self -surrender, realism, philan- 
thropy, and truth. 

Of course the wisdom of putting these elements into 
actual practice as Tolstoi' has done is open to question. 
The radical reformer, as we have seen in the cases of John 
Brown and Wendell Phillips, of Mazzini the Italian, and 
Owen the Englishman, were unwise, even excitable and 
revolutionary in their methods ; the real reform was estab- 
lished by such conservative, well-balanced men as Lincoln, 
Cavour, Thiers, and Gladstone. But when Tolstoi, by 
the extent of his renunciation of wealth, fame, honors, 
and power, became, as Howells declares, "the most im.- 
pressive spectacle of the century," he put into practice a 
•principle that had been gradually strengthening with the 
century, — the desire to benefit others, called by philoso- 
phers " altruism," and covering a course of actions designed 
to benefit others rather than ourselves. 



3l6 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

This is the very opposite of selfishness ; and selfishness, 
which has been the curse of the world for ages, has had its 
hardest knocks in this progressive Nineteenth Century, — 
the century of a growing faith in liberty, equality, and 
fraternity. 

Tolstoi's radical altruism profoundly affected the world ; 
and the decade between 1880 and 1890, which first dis- 
played the practical spirit of philanthropy and of actions 
prompted by benevolent instincts, may rightly be esteemed 
the era in which Tolstoi' the Russian was the dominating, 
even if unacknowledged influence, in literature, science, 
and art, in manners, morals, and methods, in living, at- 
tempting, and doing. 

A hasty glance over the happenings of those ten years 
between 1880 and 1890 might not at first convey the im- 
pression of a growing spirit of benevolence and philan- 
thropy. But it existed, none the less. There were wars 
and rumors of wars to record ; but they were not the per- 
sonal wars of former days ; they were wars for civilization 
rather than of ambition ; of democracy rather than of des- 
potism. Even the domestic quarrels were based on differ- 
ing ideas of justice rather than the blind ways of diplomacy. 
In England, as Professor Macvane explains, even when 
Tory supremacy came again "in the eighties," the Conser- 
vatives did not oppose all new reforms ; they did oppose 
some proposed by radical agitators ; but " many of the lib- 
eral reforms of the years since 1880 have been enacted by 
the Tories." When Gladstone, in 1881, sought to main- 
tain English rule and property rights in Ireland, he did not 
attempt to stamp out by the bloody methods of old what 
he called Parnell's ''new gospel of pillage." He sought 



HOW THE WORLD TRIED THE GOLDEN RULE. 317 

rather to help the Irish peasants by a "land-court " and an 
"adjustment" of rentals; he arrested Parnell, but he did 
not punish or persecute him in the old way. When Bis- 
marck in Germany battled with the forces of socialism 
and unrest in 1881, he did not wage a warfare of fire and 
sword as his baronial ancestors would have done. He issued 
a message of helpfulness to the needy, declaring that " be- 
yond the duty of defence, the state has the task put upon 
it of prornoting in positive ways the well-being of all its 
members, particularly the weak." And even in France, 
when Gambetta, the radical, rose to power in 1880, he 
counselled his followers not to resort to the bloody ways 
of the first revolutionists, but " to cultivate union, discipline, 
and patience, and settle questions, one by one." ' 

Here, certainly, was a marked advance upon the old 
methods of revolution and repression ; and as both pohtical 
and religious creeds seemed to clash less hostilely, and to be 
held not less strongly but less brutally, it seemed as if the 
world were, indeed, doing better by itself, and as though it 
were seeking a closer approach to that brotherhood at- 
tempted by Tolstoi" the Russian, and voiced by Lowell the 
American — 

" Oh, chimes of sweet Saint Charity, 
Peal soon that Easter morn, 
When Christ for all shall risen be, 

And in all hearts new born 1 
That Pentecost when utterance clear 

To all men shall be given ; 
When all shall say ' My brother ' here, 
And hear ' My son ' in heaven ! " 

But the Pentecost season M^as yet far away. The world 
was simply approaching it slowly, with many slips and 



3l8 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

many strivings along the upward pathway. The struggle 
for wealth was still fierce ; the power of money seemed 
scarcely less immovable ; the strife for power and possession 
was still stubborn and strong. 

In Asia, England and Russia overstepped the boundaries 
of Turkey, and became rivals for dominion in the East ; in 
Africa, England and France struggled for the joint control 
of Egypt, and were first faced by the native revolt under 
Arabi Pasha, in 1881, and then forced into a "dissolution 
of partnership " by the successful assumption of financial 
control by England in 1883 ; while in South Africa, the 
obstinately independent Boers of the Transvaal proclaimed 
in 1880 the South African Republic, notwithstanding the 
equally obstinate assertion of the British cabinet that "the 
Transvaal shall be and shall continue to be forever an in- 
tegral portion of her Majesty's dominions." Even when 
Mr. Gladstone came into power, soon after, he declared 
that " the Queen cannot be advised to relinquish her sover- 
eignty over the Transvaal ; " but when the Boers, firm in 
their faith, fought bravely for their cause, and in Febru- 
ary, 1 88 1, won the battle of Majuba Hill, Mr. Gladstone 
stopped his re-enforcements, and offered the Boers "self- 
government subject to British suzerainty " if they would 
lay down their arms. 

It was the grave mistake of a great man. Mr. Gladstone 
would have been wiser had he remembered the advice of Po- 
lonius to young Laertes, and had fought the quarrel out. 
Later complications would have been spared ; and his aban- 
donment of the Englishmen in the Transvaal after he had 
assured them that they should be protected, was declared 
by all to be little short of "national dishonor." A simi- 



HOW THE WORLD TRIED THE GOLDEN RULE. 319 

lar policy in the war against the Arabian revolt from 
Egypt in 188 1, led to 'the abandonment and death of the 
brave General Gordon at Khartoum ; while the war on the 
Afghan border, from which, in 1881, the British troops 
were also withdrawn, resulted in little glory save the bril- 
liant march of the now famous General Roberts to the re- 
lief of Kandahar, 

In each of these " affairs," however, it seemed to Eng- 
land as if the national honor had been sacrificed ; and 
though really, in each case, Mr. Gladstone was but follow- 
ing out his "altruism" — his Tolstoif faith — his desire to 
keep England from despotic strifes and unholy wars, his in- 
tentions were misjudged, and the great peace minister was 
well-nigh overthrown. But he adhered to his policy, joined 
hands with the Irish in the demand for home rule, and ad- 
vocated the practical independence of Ireland. His desires 
were noble, and his aims were high ; but so, too, were 
those of Count Tolstoi'; so, too, were those of Henry 
George, a marked character of that day in the United 
States ; but public opinion and official thought had not pro- 
gressed to these higher planes of endeavor, and Gladstone, 
as well as Tolstoi' and Henry George, were but leaders of 
a wavering minority. 

In 1880 the population of the United States had grown 
to more than fifty millions ; the centennial year had opened 
a new epoch in the story of the great republic, for then 
force gave place to freedom ; slavery and State rights be- 
came dead issues, and political questions were matters of 
principle rather than of personal jealousies. In 1883 the 
civil-service theories of office-upholding supplanted the old 
Jacksonian creed that " to the victor belong the spoils ; " 



320 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

and the protection of American industries, the welfare of 
the country, and the "greatest good of the greatest num- 
ber," became the peaceful problems that demanded settle- 
ment 

Thus, too, it may be seen, was the great western nation 
tending toward the "altruistic" methods, and the Tolstoi' 
idea of philanthropy in government was securing a foot- 
hold, if not an absolute trial. 

In 1880 slavery was abolished in Cuba; in 1881 Greece, 
thanks to English backing, secured from Turkey its ancient 
northeastern limits of Thessaly ; in 1882 the Salvation 
Army instituted its peculiar, creedless, semi-military, and 
semi-religious plan of saving the "submerged tenth" — 
the lowest orders of society — by a campaign of reforma- 
tion and philanthropy; in 1883 Henry George attempted 
his radical but well-intentioned plan of race relief, or "land 
nationalism ; " and India, reclaimed and advanced by Eng- 
lish occupation, hailed Victoria as empress supreme, and, 
urged by Mr. Bright's "Tolstoian cry " of "justice to In- 
dia," almost secured, in 1883, an absolute advance toward 
"equal rights ; " in 1884 the republic of France presented 
to the people of the United States, as a mark of friendly 
feeling and brotherly love, the gigantic statue of Liberty, 
which to-day in New York harbor stands, a welcoming 
landmark, at the gateway to the commercial metropolis of 
the western world. And in that same year of 1884 a new 
franchise bill in England added to the voters of Great 
Britain nearly two million freemen, and lessened the in- 
equalities of race and class, against which reformers had so 
long protested. The Australasian colonies of Great Britain 
took forward steps toward union and federation in a season 



HOW THE WORLD TRIED THE GOLDEN RULE. 32 1 

of increasing prosperity ; and the revision of the New Tes- 
tament in 1 88 1 marked the development of scholarly 
thought and the freedom of criticism. 

These certainly looked like an advance along the pleas- 
anter paths of peace and fraternity, and a growth in broad- 
ening and helpful methods. There are, of course, offsets 
to every benefit, and hindrances to every advance. Those 
opening years of the " eighties " were no exception in this 
way. But of what lasting benefit is progress, obtained 
without sacrifice or opposition .'' Progress comes because 
of opposition ; and the '''thought " of that, wise Roman, 
Marcus Aurelius, was as true in the nineteenth century as 
it was in the second century, when he uttered it : " That 
which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act, and 
that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on the 
road." 

In the years between 1880 and 1885 there was no lack 
of such hindrances and obstacles. There were "boycot- 
ting " and violence in perplexed Ireland ; there was politi- 
cal murder in the Emerald Isle, the assassination of a 
czar in. Russia and of a president in the United States : 
Lord Cavendish struck down in Phenix Park by Irish 
"terrorists," Alexander of Russia by Nihilist "reformers," 
and President Garfield in America by a political fanatic. 
An unreasoning despotism filled Siberia with political 
exiles, and persecuted the Jews in Russia. Even the wel- 
coming hand of free America, stretched out to all the 
world, was stricken down by the Chinese Exclusion Act 
of 1882; and the trades unions and labor agitators who 
clamored for it were but another obstacle in the upward 
path to their own liberty. The irksome bond of union 



322 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

between Norway and Sweden was strained almost to snap- 
ping in 1884, as the Norwegian writer and reformer, 
Bjornson, sought to introduce " foreign ideas " and certain 
of the teachings of Tolstoi'. In South America, progres- 
sive Chili waged war with Peru and Bolivia over the own- 
ership of mines and boundaries ; and the naval battle off 
Point Angamos tested the new war invention of armored 
fighting-ships. In Europe international jealousies over 
the vexed Eastern question held England almost alone 
against a half -allied Europe ; and one of these old-time 
despotisms, the " League of the Three Emperors," was 
renewed when, in 1884, Germany, Austria, and Russia 
sought to keep France quiet, " discipline " Italy, and 
"isolate" England. 

Bismarck was still "in the saddle," with Austria and 
Russia as his submissive allies. But no great man, in this 
advancing age, can long hold undisputed sway. The " Iron 
Chancellor's " critics grew openly hostile ; even the for- 
merly subservient Reichstag would not grant his desires ; 
majorities threatened his power, and departments denied 
him assistance ; and only the loyalty of the old Emperor 
William, to whom the iron chancellor was almost indis- 
pensable, could save him from falling before the power of 
the growing opposition. 

In France a new leader had risen to power, L6on Gam- 
betta, chief of the republicans ; but his methods and his 
manners savored too much of the dictator, and a republican 
" dictator " is worse than a king. France had experienced 
too much of this "Napoleonic" leadership; and in three 
months after his elevation as prime minister in 1882, pop- 
ularity and power were both lost by Gambetta, and France, 



HOW THE WORLD TRIED THE GOLDEN RULE. 323 

to divert agitation and criticism at home, set out on a 
career of colonial expansion. In Africa, Asia, and the 
''isles of the sea," she revived the old Napoleonic dream of 
empire and a stop to British expansion. Madagascar 
was overrun, Annam "protected," Tonquin' "assimilated," 
the Soudan "influenced," and the Congo claimed ; and by 
1885 France was recognized as one of the great powers 
that had established "spheres of influence" in the world 
of expanding possession. 

It was about this time, indeed, the early " eighties," that 
this phrase, " spheres of influence," came into diplomatic 
usage. It referred to such sections or regions of newly 
appropriated country as, by mutual consent, might be occu- 
pied or developed by the power for which it was named, or 
by whom it was controlled. Very many of these " spheres," 
especially in Africa, were acquired or appropriated about 
this time by European powers, who, as in the case of 
France, sought to divert criticism at home by expanding 
abroad. 

The criticism at home in all cases came from the oppo- 
nents of the party in power — those who were " agin' the 
government," as the saying was ; and in many cases these 
opponents were of that openly hostile class who were 
against all government of the kind under which they lived. 
In Germany the Socialists, in Russia the Nihilists, in 
France the Communists, in Austria the Anarchists, with 
equally radical "ists " in other parts of Europe, were for- 
ever attempting to stir up strife by extreme measures — 
from strikes and discontent among the working-people, to 
assassination and destruction among kings and ruling 
classes. 



324 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

The principle underlying all these radical organizations 
is, of course, a true one — it is the desire for liberty, equal- 
ity, and fraternity that has been at the basis of all revolu- 
tions since the days of Robespierre ; but as in his case, 
even though he was called "the Incorruptible," selfishness 
tinges endeavor; jealousy contributes to all movements ; and 
hatred of all who have money, property or social position, 
official power, military authority, or genius for leadership, 
impels these unwise, fanatical, or conscienceless " reform- 
ers" to outrage the very principle of brotherhood for 
which Tolstoi' stands, and for which these so-called reform- 
ers clamored, until one feels almost ready to exclaim with 
Madam Roland, — the victim of the Revolution she upheld : 
"O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!" 

These revolutionary reformers depended largely upon 
the working-man for their recruits and sympathizers ; un- 
able to see that capital and labor depend upon and are 
necessary to one another, the "agitators" endeavored to 
stir up strife between the capitalist and the wage-earner, 
basing their action upon the fundamental idea which they 
continuously "preached at " their followers : "The history 
of all society is the history of struggles between classes. 
. . . Labor is the sole origin of wealth. . . . Emancipa- 
tion of labor must be the work of the laboring class," and 
urging a union of forces among the working-men of the 
world to assert and compel the rights of labor. This, of 
course, rightly directed, means a steady rise of the people ; 
but it has never been well or properly led, — save, perhaps, 
in such excellent fraternal and self-helpful organizations as 
"The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers " in the United 
States, with others, perhaps, equally reticent and equally 



HOW THE WORLD TRIED THE GOLDEN RULE. 325 

practical in other sections of the world. But the contest 
between labor and capital is as old as the Pharaohs, and 
the secession of the Plebes to the Sacred Mount ; and even 
the wonderful Nineteenth Century was not able to decide 
it, although it did much to intensify, unite, and practical- 
ize it. 

And here again, as in so many other departments of life 
and action, the unity for which Tolstoi stood and for which, 
almost unconsciously, the world was laboring, was apparent. 
Eighty years of material and intellectual progress had 
brought the world more closely in touch ; and in spite of 
differences and drawbacks, in spite of obstacles and oppo- 
sition, in spite of agitation and antagonism, the " chimes of 
sweet Saint Charity," which Lowell yearned to hear, could 
now and then be faintly caught, as some loving soul like 
Tolstoi the "Brother," some worker for good like Booth 
the Salvationist, some practical optimist like Arnold Toyn- 
bee the " Settlement " organizer, some ante-mortem philan- 
thropist hke Peter Cooper, — sought in his own peculiar and 
not always practical way to help rather than to hinder the 
real progress of the people toward self-help, self-control, 
and self-adjustment. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

HOW THE NATIONS EXTENDED THEIR INFLUENCE. 

(^Frotn i88s to i8go.) 

THE telephone and the typewriter came into general use 
about 1885. Before that date they had been first 
curiosities, and then luxuries ; but by 1885 they had both 
become necessities, and the benefit and advantage derived 
from them by civilization had already become incalculable. 
Developments, both, of the greater inventions of the tele- 
graph and the printing-press, they were in a sense fitting 
accompaniments to those new phases of intellectual prog- 
ress which were making education the property of the 
masses rather than of the individual, regulating labor so 
that it was support rather than servitude, and introducing 
more of comfort and manliness into the harsher conditions 
of daily life. Philanthropy is not alone an element of 
charity ; it is an element of progress as well ; and whatever 
simplifies labor and softens drudgery is as helpful as 
philanthropy and as welcome as benevolence. 

In 1885 education was extending not only to the teach- 
ings of the schools, but to the instruction of the people in 
all helpful and elevating ways. In certain nations it had 
become a function of government, and Bismarck's rule in 
Germany had grown into a paternal as well as a supervis- 
ing authority. An independent people is apt to object to 
this paternalism, however, and neither England nor America 

326 




TYPES OF THE ) Hugo 

AGE OF TOLSTOI \ w™ei 



Gladstone 

Tolstoi 

R. L. Stevenson 



. THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 327 

could have been developed by such methods as Germany- 
had been. The German government co-operated with the 
German people, and had become indeed government by- 
regulation. It regulated hotels and railroads, telegraphs 
and nursing, the sale of provisions and the health of cities, 
even athletics and advertising ; it advised with scientific 
exactness, and endeavored to combine benevolence with 
justice. School attendance was compulsory, and every 
field of life and labor was cared for by men taught and 
drilled for their especial work. It was a great scheme for 
physical and intellectual development, but people are ever 
apt to rebel against too much "management." 

At the head of the German nation stood in 1889, after a 
thousand years of the Fatherland's struggle toward suprem- 
acy, a representative of the '^divine right of kings," which 
those thousand years had persistently proclaimed, and 
which Bismarck had so strenuously insisted upon. The 
old Emperor William, the ruler of united Germany, died in 
March, 1888. That same year his son and successor, 
Frederick III., a sick man at the time of his accession, died 
within three months of his father, June, 1888. Even in 
that brief reign a revolt was begun by the throne against 
the autocracy of Bismarck; and when, upon the death of his 
father, the young Emperor William II. ascended the throne, 
he did so with an overweening confidence in his own powers 
and an unquestioning belief in his own abilities that argued 
an early "friction " between himself and his mighty chan- 
cellor. 

"Not since the first Napoleon," wrote an observer in 
Berlin, " has a young man wielded such tremendous power 
as has fallen to the lot of this headstrong, violent, and re- 



328 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

vengeful prince. . . . Let the map-makers get ready and 
sharpen their tools," he added, "for they will have work 
to do." 

Russia, the home of Tolstof the philanthropist, had grown 
into a united and mighty nation, composed of people who 
were slow to change, and had not yet become used to the 
freedom their master the Czar had given them. Katkoff, 
the great leader of Russian nationality, who had labored 
for what is called the " Russification " of the empire, died 
in 1887, and czar and peasant alike mourned beside his 
bier ; for the true Russian felt that Russia could be the 
real nation which its greatest rulers, from Peter to Alex- 
ander — arbitrary and despotic though they were — had 
sought to make it, only as it followed the path marked out 
for it by this great privy councillor. The world outside, who 
knew only the despotism, the nihilism, and the exiles of 
Russia, could not appreciate the mighty influence of this 
man, who wished to make Russia Russian and not German ; 
national and not divided. Tolstoi's higher idea of broth- 
erhood, however, did not fit well into Katkoff' s idea of 
nationality. 

Education and enhghtenment, too, had brought England 
to a condition of prosperity unequalled in her history. 
Poverty and need, suffering and squalor, still existed ; but 
the age of philanthropy had improved the condition of the 
people ever since the day when Charles Dickens, in his 
masterly novels, led the crusade against English official- 
ism, even as Thackeray did against English sham. The 
"cry of the children," as voiced thirty years before by 
Mrs. Browning, like the cry for bread from starving 
England in the still earlier days of the Chartist troubles, 



THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 329 

had led British statesmen and lawmakers through a period 
of philanthropic and industrial progress until, in the decade 
of the " eighties," the advance of the people had been 
almost as remarkable as the progress of the kingdom in 
all material things — thanks to the practical operations 
of thought, as exhibited in such discoveries as railway 
growth, telegraph and telephone expansion, cheap post- 
age, and the skilled and energetic application of steam 
and machinery to the productive industries of her mul- 
tiplying manufactories. 

The year 1887 was duly celebrated in England as the 
fiftieth anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria. 
With splendid ceremonies in Westminster Abbey ; with 
military and naval pageants, as notable as they were 
extensive ; witJi delegations from every part of the vast 
empire ; with waving banners and brilliant illumination ; 
with swelling music and booming cannon, — the British 
Empire, from bound to bound, kept fitting national 
thanksgiving for the unparalleled progress of the em- 
pire during the fifty years of Queen Victoria's reign. 

The Victorian age had indeed been the age of progress ; 
the reign of Victoria had been more eventful than that of 
either or all of the three other reigns that reached the 
half-century hmit — Henry III., Edward III., and George 
III, ; for the people had progressed as never before in 
an equal space of time ; every department of life and 
action had advanced and broadened ; and the voice of the 
people expressed through their parliament was now the 
supreme power of the land, which monarchs could not 
curtail nor ministers disregard. 

" Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers," Tennyson, 



330 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

brightest of the Victorian poets, had written years 
before ; and in all this notable advance through fifty 
years of effort and achievement since that slight girl of 
eighteen had seated herself in the coronation chair of 
England, wisdom sometimes kept but unequal step with 
knowledge, and sometimes "lingered" woefully. A nat- 
ural dislike of change has always held man back from 
the forward step ; and every improvement has been 
resisted, from independence to electricity, and from labor- 
saving machinery to parliamentary reform and national 
expansion. Even in the years succeeding 1885, when 
humanity was slowly taking the place of selfishness in the 
way of the world, every advance was resisted and every 
attempt toward the general good was checked. 

In England Gladstone, master-builder of British democ- 
racy, who, from the Tory of 1832, had become "the Great 
Commoner" of 1885, fell from power in 1886 for lack 
of support by the people he sought to benefit, unite, and 
glorify. Gambetta, who, in France, would have made his 
country a parliamentary republic, fell, in 1882, because 
those whom he would have helped feared his dictatorial 
ways, and died, disgraced, within a few months of his 
down-fall ; while the political adventurer Boulanger, " the 
hope of the people" in 1886, who loudly proclaimed him- 
self the mainstay of "the open repubhc," and was hailed 
with exultant ''vivas I " fell by reason of his very success 
in 1 889, and was driven into exile and suicide. In Italy, 
Crispi, major and minister of Garibaldi, the republican dic- 
tator of Sicily in i860, prime minister of Italy and leader 
for the constitution, liberty, and peace, and hailed in 1887 
as "the one minister necessary to Italian honor," fell from 



THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 331 

leadership because he dared to criticise a foreign policy 
which he thought bad for Italy. Bismarck, the creator of 
German unity, and the hope of the nation while the old 
Emperor William lived, toppled from power in 1889, be- 
cause he dared declare his opposition to the policy of the 
young Emperor William, who arrogantly demanded "un- 
questioning obedience to the crown." In seeking to com- 
promise matters in Austria between those who demanded 
" German unity in Austria " and those who clamored for 
Slavonian union (or "Austria for the Czechs"), Count 
Taaffe lost^ his grip ; while Svendrup, who labored for 
reform and education and Scandinavian supremacy in 
Norway and Sweeden, was forced from power as prime 
minister in 1889. 

So, in all lands those who led or desired the advance of 
the people in nationality or reform felt the uncertainties 
of power or the fickleness of popularity. But the power 
of the people survived all changes and attacks. 

This power of the people displayed itself in all lands. 
The imperial federation of England in 1887 — an out- 
gro"v\1;h of colonial loyalty in the splendor of the Queen's 
Jubilee of that year — became more firmly established, 
and, by 1889, even Ireland seemed at peace. The advo- 
cates of monarchy in France yielded, in 1889, to the evi- 
dent determination of the French people to remain a 
republic " one and indivisible ; " and the Paris exhibi- 
tion of that year, held to commemorate the one hundredth 
anniversary of the Republic, once again drew all eyes to 
the fact that France was great and prosperous, and had 
no desire for Boulanger's policy of "Agitation and adven- 
ture." The " League of Peace " between Germany, Aus- 



332 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

tria, and Italy in 1887 was but enforcing the popular 
disapproval of anything that should disturb the " harmony 
of Europe ;" so, to divert the energies of agitators, 
increase the commercial prosperity, and broaden the 
world-influence of civilization, the leading governments 
of Europe set busy hands at work abroad, and, before 
1890, were entering upon an era of colonial expansion, 
and finding vent for all their international jealousies in 
what has been well called the ''Scramble for Africa." 

This "scramble" seemed to affect every portion of the 
former " dark continent," — dark no longer, thanks to 
European "exploitation." Before 1890 dawned, England 
was in Egypt struggling for the possession of the Nile ; 
she was in South Africa consolidating her power over insur- 
gent Zululand ; she was establishing a protectorate over 
Zanzibar ; while Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, 
and Belguim, entering into the " scramble," marked out 
"spheres of influence" which, by 1890, had zigzagged and 
circled over all Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to the 
Mediterranean, and "influenced" all sections of the dark 
continent not claimed by Turkey as suzerain or held as 
native powers. The "native powers " indeed were by that 
time few and far between ; even the Dutch Boers of South 
Africa had assumed the name of Afrikanders, — that is, 
white natives, — and had organized^ the Afrikander Bund, 
which aimed not only at white Dutch influence and suprem- 
acy in South Africa, but at the ultimate complete indepen- 
dence of that section as the " United States of South 
Africa." 

Even the United States of America had a little interest 
in Africa. For on the west coast, with a sea frontage of 



THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 333 

four hundred miles, and an area of nearly fifteen thousand 
square miles, the American Colonization Society had, in 
1822, founded a colony of free negroes who desired the 
political and social freedom denied them in the United 
States. This philanthropic experiment resulted in an inde- 
pendent and established government as the Republic of 
Liberia in 1 847, recognized as such by foreign nations, and 
''assisted" especially by England and the United States, 
with a president, senate, and house of representatives, and 
a million and a half inhabitants. So, even though the 
great American republic had no real sphere of influence 
in Africa, it had to a certain extent 2. protege, even though 
it was not a recognized and "influenced " one. 

The United States of America, meanwhile, secure in its 
mighty homeland, was fast growing into greatness in those 
years when Europe was outlining spheres of influence 
abroad. In the ten years between 1880 and 1890 over 
five million immigrants had come into the United States 
through the ports of New York, Baltimore, Boston, Phila- 
delphia, and San Francisco; the population of the great 
republic had grown from fifty millions in 1880 to sixty- 
two millions in 1890, and 1889 closed with forty-two States 
in the Union. As against the thirteen States of 1789, 
when the Constitution was adopted and the less than four 
millions of inhabitants, this growth was phenomenal in the 
history of the world. It was an eloquent commentary on 
the value of personal liberty, national independence, and 
equal rights. 

The one hundred years of popular government which 
closed in 1889 were fitly recognized by a jubilee cele- 
bration, in the city of New York, of the Centennial anni- 



334 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

versary of the adoption of the Constitution, and the inaug- 
uration of George Washington as first president of the 
United States. What that inauguration and that Consti- 
tution meant, not only to the United States of America, 
but to the world at large, this story of the Nineteenth 
Century has tried to suggest, but it cannot adequately tell 
or even estimate ; for the influence of that one hundred 
years of government " of the people, by the people, for the 
people," had been felt throughout the world; and the "new 
birth of freedom " which freedom's chief martyr, Abraham 
Lincoln, desired for his own homeland, had even before 
the American Republic's hundred years of constitutional 
liberty closed, extended to all peoples and to all lands. 

Especially had the people of the south lands of America 
— the republics of Central and South America — felt this 
influence and impulse. Less contained and less conserva- 
tive than the cooler Anglo-Saxon temperament of the 
North, the Latin Americans of the South, as they had 
established independence only through blood, maintained 
it also only through blood. Feud and faction, and the rest- 
lessness of minorities, kept those fertile lands nearer the 
equator in perpetual turmoil and frequent change. But 
though revolution succeeded revolution, never once did 
those nations let go the main and central fact of republi- 
can independence ; and the effect of personal and political 
liberty was so great that even the liberal empire of Brazil, 
was, in 1889, overthrown, and the republic proclaimed in 
its place. Even the good old Emperor, Dom Pedro, be- 
cause he was an emperor, was exiled ; and on the nineteenth 
of November, 1889, the provisional government declared 
that monarchy was abolished, and that "the provinces of 



THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 335 

Brazil, united by federation, compose the United States of 
Brazil." Thus was the last vestige of old-world monarchy 
swept from the shores of free America. 

In the very year that saw the downfall of monarchy in 
Brazil, Japan, that old island despotism of the Asiatic 
seas, became a constitutional monarchy. Adopting the 
methods and many of the manners of Western civilization, 
Americanized as well as Europeanized in its shrewd and 
ready adoption of progressive ways, this Oriental empire of 
forty millions agreed to and promulgated, on the eleventh 
of February, 1899, a Constitution, founded on that of Ger- 
many, and guaranteeing to the people of Japan liberty of 
religion, freedom of speech, the franchise to all men who 
paid a small specified tax, with a legislative assembly 
consisting of a house of lords and a house of commons, 
in the English style. New treaties were signed with all 
the great powers of the world ; commissioners were sent 
to Europe and America to study methods of legislation ; 
railways and street-cars were introduced and extended ; 
and a nation, hermit for centuries, and known to the com- 
merce of the world for less than twenty years, possessed 
in 1889 a foreign commerce amounting to more than one 
hundred millions of dollars, with national banks, harbor im- 
provements, and even a national debt ! In all modern his- 
tory there is no such sudden leap into civilization as this 
marvellous awakening of Japan. 

This progress of Japan, with the growing possibilities of 
China as a land for trade and development, extended the 
European desire for "spheres of influence" from Africa to 
Asia ; and Great Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, 
and Russia had now large holdings or sure footings on the 



336 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

islands and continents of the Asiatic shores of the Pacific. 
Even the United States felt the impulse to make itself 
secure in the Pacific, and looked with a practical business 
eye upon the mid-Pacific island group of Plawaii and the 
further western group of Samoa. Already was civilization 
touching these western stepping-stones to Asia. The king- 
dom of Hawaii — long known as the Sandwich Islands — 
were so closely connected with the United States in trade 
and commerce that already the old-time despotism of the 
Kamehameha of 1800 'had changed into the limited and 
constitutional monarchy of 1887 — fast tending towards 
a republic, while American influence was dominating the 
islands. The native kingdom of Samoa, whose " ideas and 
manners," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, " date back be- 
fore the Roman Empire," were, in 1885, coveted by and 
practically partitioned among the merchants and traders of 
three foreign powers — England, Germany, and the United 
States. Rival provinces and rival kings disturbed with 
their jealousies the peacefulness of this South Sea island 
group, fomented and disturbed by the rival traders of the 
three nations. In 1886 Germany, backing up one of the 
rival native kings against the one in possession, practically 
annexed Samoa under a tributary king to the open dis- 
approval of England and America. In 1889 the United 
States, to whom a coaling-station had been granted, for- 
mally protested against the action of Germany, and what 
looked at first like an insignificant bit of commercial rivalry 
developed at once into an international dispute. Civil war 
broke out between the rival kings ; German, American, and 
British warships were hurried in semi-hostile fashion to 
Apia, and a three-cornered war seemed imminent. 



THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 337 

Suddenly, on the sixteenth of March, 1889, Dame Na- 
ture took a hand. On the morning of that day a fearful 
hurricane burst upon Samoa. " The formidable surf of 
the Pacific," as Stevenson calls it, lashed into fury by the 
terrible wind, broke into the harbor of Apia, driving the 
warships ashore, shattered and wrecked them with fearful 
loss of life, and awoke three great nations to the truth that, 
as Stevenson, the historian of what he calls this " footnote 
of history," declares, "not the whole Samoan archipelago 
was worth this loss in men and ships." National arbitra- 
tion ensued. The Conference of Berlin, held in April, 
1889, arrived at an amicable arrangement of international 
difficulties ; and, again to quote from Stevenson, " the so- 
called hurricane of March sixteenth made thus a marking 
epoch in world-history. Directly and at once it brought 
about the Congress and Treaty of Berlin ; indirectly, 
and by a process still continuing, it founded the modern 
navy of the United States. Coming years and other his- 
torians will declare the influence of that. . . . For, with 
the hurricane, the broken warships, and the stranded sail- 
ors," he continues, " came an end of violence. . . . Two 
years of blundering were obliterated by the negotiations at 
Berlin. The example thus offered by Germany is rare in 
history ; in the career of Prince Bismarck, so far as I am 
instructed, it should stand unique, for he seems magnani- 
mously to have owned that his policy was wrong." 

This was the hardest as it was the noblest thing a man 
of the Iron Chancellor's nature could do. It showed, after 
all, the Tolstoi strain. But Bismarck's action in the Samoan 
dispute was only a slight halt in his scheme for the colonial 
expansion of Germany, which had already involved him in 



338 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

trouble with his colonial rivals, England and Spain. So, 
however much the influence of what we may call the Tol- 
stoif element of fraternity really did touch him, we may not 
absolutely say ; but certainly this influence was affecting 
the civilized world. 

Especially did it draw the United States into a desire 
for mutual relations with its own American neighbors ; and 
in 1889 James G. Blaine, the energetic and able Secretary 
of State, brought about one of his plans for greater unity 
in the meeting of a Pan-American Congress, which, on the 
nineteenth of November, assembled at Washington. Rep- 
resentatives from the principal states of North and South 
America were present ; and consultations were held result- 
ing in the reaffirmation of the " Monroe Doctrine " of 1824, 
and the closer union of the American Republics in matters 
common to the various states, and for the "furtherance of 
international commerce and comity," including, even, the 
vast idea of an iron band of railway connection from Beh- 
ring Sea to Terra del Fuego. 

So, gradually, as the last decade of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury drew near, did the world draw nearer together in neigh- 
borliness ; the unknown corners of the earth were fewer, 
the unexplored parts smaller, the unbeaten tracks scarcer. 
Trade and commerce, curiosity and pleasure, science and 
investigation, were beating all roads into highways, and un- 
earthing the odd folks and queer places that had been hid- 
den away since the origin of species and the budding life of 
man. True, growth did not put a stop to selfishness, nor 
did development overcome greed ; new opportunities 
aroused fresh discussions as to ownerships, and new pos- 
sibilities started fresh quarrels. With thirty-three thousand 



THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 339 

steam and sailing vessels engaged in the carrying trade of 
the world, with a tonnage of twenty-two millions, and with 
nearly forty nations battling for the business of the globe, 
competition grew sharp, and rivalries were often bitter ; 
but the policy of "live and let live" had well-nigh sup- 
planted the old methods of business brutality, and the 
" Black Fridays " that had marked panics in speculation 
grew less frequent and less ruinous. 

The vast development of the gold and diamond mining 
industry in South Africa did, indeed, increase the friction 
between Boer and Briton in that land of clashing interests, 
and brought to the surface, as the prime mover in the 
whole trouble, the restless and remarkable English diamond 
miner, Cecil Rhodes of Kimberley. Rival interests, poor 
management, and careless financiering put an end in 1889, 
after eight years of work, to the great scheme by which 
De Lesseps, hero of the Suez Canal, sought to join the 
Atlantic and the Pacific by a canal through the Isthmus of 
Panama ; the half-breed Canadian of the "great lone land," 
Louis Riel of the Red River country, for a second and last 
time tried to raise a revolt against English supremacy in 
Canada in 1885, only to meet defeat and death at Regina ; 
Servia and Bulgaria, those restless principalities on the 
Balkan borders of Turkey, fell into the wrangle of war in 
1885, over the union of "the two Bulgaries," which ended 
in Bulgarian victory, European protest, and Russian domi- 
nation ; labor troubles shook both sides of the sea ; and 
the determined " Russification " of the Czar's dominions 
finally swallowed up the individuality of Poland and Fin- 
land, in spite of protest and desires for liberty, — all these 
were obstacles in the path of that broader and wiser charity 



340 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

which was gradually influencing and harmonizing men and 
nations, and bringing them nearer in friendship and agree- 
ment as befitted the age of Tolstoi', the philanthropist. 

Of course I would not be considered as asserting that 
Tolstoi, the Russian count who, since the Crimean War, 
had been working out his problem of humanity in his own 
peculiar way, was recognized or accepted by the world as 
its tutor in humanity and its leader in fraternity. His 
ways and methods were alike overstrained and impractical ; 
the key-notes of his teachings, " resist not evil," worked 
out along his lines could scarcely help the world forward ; 
and his attempt to do in this nineteenth century literally 
the will of Christ as conveyed to the people of the first 
century would scarcely fit the changed conditions of the 
world ; but, as Howells says of Tolstoi", " No man so glori- 
ously gifted and so splendidly placed has ever bowed his 
neck and taken the yoke upon it ; " and in many ways his 
story and his influence must have affected the world of his 
day — even while it rejected. and ridiculed his methods. 

But, after all, the spirit of the Nineteenth Century itself 
had been the world's greatest purifier — enlightening, enfran- 
chising, and redeeming ; for, in that uplifting of the people, 
the very element that moved Tolstoi', the Christ-like wish 
to benefit others, had place ; what the Germans called the 
Zeitgeist — the spirit of the time — that general drift of 
thought or feeling which characterizes or directs any period 
or epoch — had, in the decade of 1880 to 1890, been, in 
spite of strife and selfishness, in spite of greed and gain, 
the altruistic or benevolent awakening ; the better con- 
science of the world was being touched ; education and 
philanthropy were doing practical work ; aristocracy was 



THE NATIONS EXTEND THEIR INFLUENCE. 34 1 

gradually yielding to democracy — not the democracy that 
vulgarizes, but the democracy that uplifts — the democracy 
of Lincoln and Emerson, of Gladstone and Tolstoi, the 
democracy which, as Lowell says, has "energy for good," 
and which, he adds, " amid all the fruitless turmoil of the 
world, holds one thing steadfast and of favorable omen — 
the instinct in men to admire what is better and more 
beautiful than themselves." 



" The facilities and possibilities of 
coutniunication with our fellowmeii., 
aiidthe improvements in the produc- 
tion of light for common use are suf- 
ficiently neiv and remarkable to 
distinguish this century from all the 
ages that preceded it." 

Alfred Russel Wallace. 



THE AGE OF EDISON. 

Energy. 
[i 890- 1 900.) 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON, 

THE " WIZARD OF MENLO PARK; 
Born Milan, Ohio, February 11, 184^. 



CHAPTER XX. 

WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE THE VALUE OF THINGS. 
{From i8qo to i8g^.) 

" N TO other period in the history of the human race," 
1 N says Professor Seignobos, " has seen such profound 
and rapid transformation in the material conditions of life 
as have taken place during the Nineteenth Century." And 
this has largely been because of the world's methods of 
practically applying the inventions of the century, many of 
which, indeed, had their beginnings in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, but, in their inception, lacked the demand for appli- 
cation which came because of international needs and 
international help. 

This help came not always because of friendship, for 
inventors have ever been rivals, and often enemies. But 
the means of communication, of comparison, and of infor- 
mation have increased so notably as the people of the 
world became more neighborly and in touch with one an- 
other that, as Professor Seignobos has well explained, "the 
scholars and inventors of all nations have been united in so 
close an international collaboration that it is not always 
possible to determine which country takes the initiative in 
each invention ; and they have passed from one nation to 
another, gaining imperceptibly from each." 

The practical application of these international inven- 
tions was so widely made during the last ten years of the 

345 



346 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

century," that the decade between 1890 and 1900 may well 
be termed the era of scientific progress and application ; 
while the ability to use, develop, test, and establish these 
notable and often crude beginnings of invention was, in 
those years, so remarkably displayed by a certain remark- 
able American inventor, that the closing ten years of the 
Nineteenth Century — the heir of all the ages of invention 
and discovery, of thought and effort, that preceded them 
— may, without injustice to others, be broadly character- 
ized as the age of Edison. 

In his New Jersey laboratory and work-rooms, Thomas 
Alva Edison, often spoken of as " the Wizard of Menlo 
Park," tested, tried, and practically developed many new 
inventions that had already become public necessities - — 
from "the ticker" to the telephone, and the phonograph 
to the incandescent lamp. Other men may have been 
even more remarkable in originality of investigation and 
invention, but none had more wonderful facility for devel- 
oping and adapting the crude ideas of other men to prac- 
tical results than had Edison ; and as a genius in the 
application of scientific discovery, he stands unique in his 
day and generation. 

" We live at a time," says Benjamin Kidd, "when science 
counts nothing insignificant. She has recognized that 
every organ and rudimentary organ has its utilitarian his- 
tory. Every phase and meaning of life has its meaning 
in her eyes ; nothing has come into existence by chance." 
When, in the late " seventies," James Prescott Joule, the 
EngUsh scientist, developed his discoveries as to the 
mechanical value of heat, and that the forces of nature, 
showing that mechanical action, heat, light, electricity, 



WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 347 

magnetism, and chemical action are so closely related that 
any one may be used to produce the rest, he made one of 
the greatest discoveries of the age — the economy of 
nature, which permits no such thing as waste, and the 
preserv^ation of force as an indestructible element ; in other 
words, the practical value of energy. 

That, I believe, may be taken as typical of the closing 
decade of the Nineteenth Century — the application of 
energy to life. Whether it is keeping, by a display of 
force, the armed peace of Europe, or redeeming from 
degradation in spite of itself "the submerged tenth of the 
human race," towards whose recovery the Salvation Army 
directs its peculiar and energetic methods ; whether it is 
keeping alive for the preservation of society the very labor 
agitations that seem to threaten it, or displaying at a 
mighty fair in Chicago in 1893 the accumulated produc- 
tions of the world ; whether it is extending the benefits of 
civilized progress to all the corners of the globe, and into 
all "staked out" "spheres of influence," or urging the 
world on to a still more rapid development by a series of 
surprising inventions from new means of production to new 
means of destruction — energy has been behind it all ; 
and the restlessness of achievement entered into every 
department of life, from education to finance, and from 
politics to literature. This is the new doctrine of " the ' 
strenuous life." 

When the " nineties " came, the great lights of litera- 
ture who had made the age so glorious had already been 
extinguished, or were near their end. . Balzac and Thack- 
eray, Macaulay and Dickens, Heine and Bryant, Schopen- 
hauer and Humboldt and Thiers, had long since passed 



348 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

away ; Longfellow and George Eliot, Darwin and Hugo, 
Turgeneff and Green and Robert Browning had not lived 
out the " eighties ; " and when 1900 came, few of the great 
names save Tolstoi' the Russian and Ibsen the Norwegian 
were on the roll of the living. In 1891 died Bancroft and 
Lowell ; in 1892, Whittier and Tennyson "crossed the bar," 
and that same year Renan tested his own theories of life 
and death; in 1894 Holmes closed the glorious roll of 
Boston's once famous hterary circle — " the last leaf " on 
that tree of goodly fellowship of kindred soul which had 
raised America far above the plane of Sydney Smith's 
once querulous query about the American book. 

And when Holmes died people asked, " Will there ever be 
any men like those again ? " regardless of the very fact for 
which the closing Nineteenth Century stood — the conser- 
vation of energy and the thrift of nature which can pro- 
duce and develop, if need be, a hundred Tennysons or a 
hundred Longfellows, diffused in smaller quantities to be 
sure, but of equal value when the total influence is reck- 
oned up. The future may not need flaring beacon-lights, 
when men may draw help and radiance, guidance and good, 
from all their fellow-men. Only great needs now call out 
the great man. 

In art no less than in literature, the Nineteenth Century 
had made wonderful strides. No need now for a Michael 
Angelo or a Raphael to stand as lone peaks above a level 
sea, when the level itself was raised to a new and glorious 
elevation. A century which in music began with Beetho- 
ven and closed with Wagner displayed alike the energy, 
courage, and prophecy of progress ; while the experimental 
age of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Horace Vernet developed, 



WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 349 

thanks to photography and the advance of education, into 
the more natural achievements of Leighton, and Baudry, 
and Sargent, and St. Gaudens. 

La Farge and WilHam Morris, in 1895, linked art to 
craftsmanship, and glorified the union of hand and brain ; 
'while through the century great names stood out as mas- 
ters and leaders in their profession, — Ingre the delineator, 
Daubigny the naturalist, Corot the mystic, Millet the hu- 
manitarian, Meissonier the miniaturist, Baudry, master of 
nobility in decoration, Whistler the etcher, Veretschagin 
the realist, Munkacsy the storyist, Sargent the portraitist, 
Chavannes the decorative tonist, Montecelli the colorist, 
Tryon the animalist — these all, with Hunt and Inness, 
Abbey and Pyle, Landseer and Rossetti, Laurens and For- 
tuny and Israel, Bastien-Lepage and Van Mark and Vierge, 
with Thorwaldsen and St. Gaudens, and Macnionnies and 
Baraye and Fremiet, displayed, in painting and sculpture, 
in decoration and design, the wonderful progress of a cen- 
tury, great in these as in all other departments of endeavor 
and achievement. 

The year 1890 saw also the result of an inevitable clash 
between the old and the new ; between the statesman of a 
changing era and the strong man of a new dispensation. 

" Let the king's will be the highest law," wrote the 
"strenuous" young Emperor of Germany in the album of 
an autograph hunter in 1 890 ; and that very year came the 
struggle between the king's will and that of his equally 
determined Chancellor. Political parties of all sorts sprang 
into existence upon the accession of William II. The rest- 
less young emperor took vigorous measures to foster and ob- 
tain his own desires ; and when Prince Bismarck wished to 



350 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

have things his way, and especially wished to curb and dis- 
countenance labor councils and conferences, young William 
declared that he was emperor, and that he proposed to rule 
alone. At last, when Bismarck refused to give up an old 
law which compelled all other ministers of state to commu- 
nicate with the emperor through him, the Chancellor, 
William the Emperor demanded the resignation of Bismarck 
the Chancellor, and the great minister fell from power. 
I '< I am as much afflicted as if I had lost my grandfather 
anew," said the young emperor; "but we must endure 
whatever God sends us, even if we should have to die for 
it. The post of officer on the quarter-deck of the ship of 
state has fallen to me ; the course .remains unchanged. 
Forward, with all steam! " 

i The emperor managed to "put up with his loss," how- 
ever, and, the very incarnation of the energy of his day, 
drove the ship ahead with remarkable force, and in apparent 
though often questionable security. Although he never 
recalled Bismarck to power, the two opposing natures were 
finally reconciled ; and when, in 1893, Bismarck was brought 
very near to death's door, the young emperor visited the 
old statesman, and fervently congratulated him on his re- 
covery ; while on the eightieth birthday of 'the prince in 
1895, when the Reichstag refused, by Socialist votes, to 
wish their old enemy " many happy returns of the day," 
the emperor was so indignant that he very nearly dissolved 
the assembly. But Bismarck never again regained his lost 
power. 

Although linking himself strongly with his army and the 
display of power, William of Germany worked in the inter- 
ests of the peace of Europe, which he sought to maintain 



When men began to prove value of things. 351 

by leagues and alliances. In 1891 the triple alliance, or 
"League of Peace," was again renewed by Germany, Aus- 
tria, and Italy. It was a measure hailed, even by those 
who were not parties to it, as a fresh security ; and the 
peace of Europe was maintained, not without some friction, 
but at least with effectiveness. The fear of war, which 
had become more terrible by the production of new instru- 
ments of destruction — dynamite, melinite, and other fear- 
ful explosives, torpedoes, smokeless powder, a transforma- 
tion in artillery and firearms, and accuracy of aim — held 
the nations in check. To the great powers came not again 
the clash of arms ; and 1870 saw the last great Continental 
war of the century. 

The victories of peace had, however, fully as restraining 
an influence as the advance in methods of war. The tele- 
graph, the railway, and the newspaper were quite as potent 
factors for peace as were dynamite, smokeless powder, and 
maxim guns. Of the fifty thousand newspapers of the 
world, more than one-half were printed in the English lan- 
guage ; of this number the United States and Canada 
issued over twenty thousand ; and the total yearly circula- 
tion of the newspapers of the republic and the dominion 
was thirty five hundred milhons. Admitting all their short- 
comings and all their faults, can the influence for good, as a 
factor of communication and race progress, of this immense 
output of printed sheets, in one land only in 1 894, be even 
estimated .'' In 1 890 the railroads of the world reached 
a total of over three hundred and fifty thousand miles of 
track, carrying twenty three hundred millions of passen- 
gers, and transporting more than fourteen hundred million 
tons of freig^ht ; in 1 893 the miles of railway had increased to 



352 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

over four hundred and six thousand, and the carrying facil- 
ities had proportionately increased. Comfort as well as 
speed and strength were sought after and attained, — the 
Empire State Express on a New York railroad making in 
1893 a mile in thirty -two seconds, equivalent to one hun- 
dred and twelve and a half miles an hour, while, in 1894, a 
special train was run from Jacksonville in Florida to the 
city of Washington, seven hundred and eighty miles, in- 
cluding thirty four stops, in less than sixteen hours; in 1800 
it would have taken nearer sixteen days to make this same 
trip. Steam on the water was accomplishing equally won- 
derful things. In June, 18 19, the steamship "Savannah," 
made the ocean run to Liverpool in twenty-six days ; in 
October, 1894, the Cunard steamship "Lucania" made the 
ocean run from Queenstown to New York in five days, 
seven hours, and twenty-three minutes! In April, 1877, 
the first telephone message was sent, a distance of three 
miles, between Boston and Somerville, in Massachusetts ; 
in 1893 conversation by telephone was possible between 
New York and Chicago, a distance of more than a thousand 
miles, and electricity, practically applied to daily uses, was 
lighting towns and buildings on both sides of the sea, while 
by 1893, over five thousand miles of electric street rail- 
ways — " trolley-roads " — were in operation in the United 
States. Here, indeed, had been a startling change since 
"old Ben Franklin's day," — that dear old philosopher who 
wished he might be able to see what electricity would be 
doing in a hundred years. 

In no way were the wonderful achievements of peace 
more widely and practically displayed than at the splendid 
World's Fair at Chicago, which opened on May i, 1893, as a 



WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 353 

commemorative jubilee of the four hundredth anniversary 
of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, the 
Genoese navigator. To the success of this mighty Inter- 
national Exhibition, all the nations and colonies of the world 
contributed, and every department of the world's progress 
and pleasure was represented, from the Parliament of Re- 
ligions to the Midway Plaisance, and from the caravels of 
Columbus to the triumphs of electricity. The exposition 
grounds covered six hundred and thirty acres, with a front- 
age of a mile and a half on Lake Michigan ; and one hun- 
dred and fifty buildings, great and small, made up the 
glorious "White City," erected within a mighty city which, 
at the time of the World's Fair, had a population of one 
and a half millions — the outgrowth in sixty years from the 
straggling little village of 1832, built in the shelter of a 
frontier fort, and with a population of less than three hun- 
dred. In no single instance of material development could 
the Nineteenth Century show a greater wonder than in the 
marvellous growth of the city of Chicago, the metropolis 
of the prairies and the lakes. 

As to moral and spiritual growth, what could the Nine- 
teenth Century display in the decade of material progress, 
four hundred years after Columbus the navigator had 
thrown open the door of a new world } At the Parliament 
of Religions, convened at the World's Fair, in Chicago, 
all religions were represented, "from the dignified repre- 
sentatives of hoary Brahmanism, to the exponents of the 
latest born of Christian sects." No similar gathering had 
ever been achieved or attempted in the world's history ; 
and in nothing was the spirit of the Nineteenth Century — 
the age of Lincoln and TolstoY, of Gladstone and Bismarck, 



354 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

of Cavour and Edison — more significantly displayed. For 
it represented unity, independence, fraternity, power, and 
progress, and ably proved, as Dr. Momerie declared, " that 
there is a unity of religion underlying all the diversities of 
religions ; " the archimandrite from ancient Damascus 
agreed with Professor Drummond of modern Glasgow, that 
the spirit of love was "the greatest thing in the world; " 
and the archbishop of Zante joined hands with Max Miiller 
and Lyman Abbott and Cardinal Gibbons in token of the 
fraternity of faith. Was not that typical of Nineteenth 
Century progress and brotherhood ? Even trials for her- 
esy, and the sullen flicker of occasional persecution or 
bigotry, could not belittle or curtail the real religious 
growth of the world. 

And though statistics showed in 1 892 over three million 
registered paupers in Europe and America, taking no ac- 
count of the "out-door poor," even among these philan- 
thropy and charity were attempting the new practical work 
of self-help rather than unwise and unquestioning giving. 
The Salvation Army, organized primarily for " the evan- 
gelization of the unchurched masses," but thinking first of 
saving the body in order to " save the soul" of man, had, 
in spite of peculiar and boisterous methods, gradually won 
the respect and encouragement of all who sought the bet- 
tering of the race, and by 1894 it had five thousand "corps" 
or branches in the four quarters of the globe ; it directed 
and conducted twelve thousand officers, and had an annual 
income of four millions of dollars. To this army of the 
"unchurched" the army of the "churched," through the 
various branches of the Christian Church — Roman Cath- 
olic, Protestant, Greek, Abyssinian, Coptic, Armenian, 



WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 355 

Nestorian, and others, showed a total, in 1892, of nearly 
five hundred million communicants, scattered throughout 
the world, of which nearly one hundred and twenty mil- 
lions were English-speaking communities, while the Chris- 
tian Sunday-schools of the world, nurseries of Christian 
civilization, numbered, in 1893, two hundred and twenty- 
five thousand, with over twenty millions of scholars, and 
more than two million teachers. This was a notable ad- 
vance since the day, one hundred years before, when 
Robert Raikes, the English " newspaper man," started in 
his home town of Gloucester the uncertain experiment 
which was the beginning of the Sunday-school statistics of 
the world. 

But even in the early nineties the world needed the 
energy of application from the forces of good as well as 
from the forces of scientific progress. Evil still stalked 
abroad in the world ; but, thanks to the wide methods of 
communication and publicity, the forces of evil could no 
longer work in the darkness or in secret. When, in 1893, 
the hired assassins and brutal soldiers of "the unspeakable 
Turk " began the bloody massacre of the Armenian Chris- 
tians, whom Europe had protected as " Christians and 
agents of civilization," all the world flamed into an out- 
burst of indignant protest. Labor disturbances, too, in 
which the workingmen, unwisely counselled and unwisely 
led, resorted, in many instances, from rightful protest to 
open revolt ; and anarchy, the assassin of honest labor, 
allied itself to peaceful agitation until, in Europe and 
America, strikes developed into riots in which govern- 
mental authority and the " bayonet cure " were forced to 
quell the rising, only to still further antagonize the opposi- 



356 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

tion of labor and capital. Anarchy assassinated the presi- 
dent of France in 1895; anarchy disturbed the peace in 
Italy and Spain, and set back the real progress of democ- 
racy ; while, even in free America, the dozen strikes of 
1894 produced lawlessness and disorder, interfered with 
traffic, travel, and the rights of citizens, caused a loss of 
many millions in property and wages, and compelled the 
president of the United States to take "prompt and rigor- 
ous measures " to suppress the riotous demonstration, and 
rallied to the side of repression the " law-abiding masses 
of the people " and the power and resources of the entire 
nation. 

But all this was on the wrong side of the account, — an 
account swelled quite as much by the arrogance of money 
as by the anarchy of labor. On the other side the balance 
really stood ; for, in spite of evil methods and the curse of 
selfishness, neighborliness increased, and progress was real 
and lasting. The sea-encircled lands of Australasia drew 
nearer towards federation ; the " submerged tenth " of the 
British slums was lifted, by practical philanthropy, nearer 
to the light. In 1892 Gladstone, now recognized as truly 
the " Grand Old Man," was made, for the fourth time, pre- 
mier of England, and bent his great energies to the "frank 
concession of Home Rule to Ireland ; " one hundred thou- 
sand miles of telegraph wire were bringing India into touch 
with the world, and the National Congress at Calcutta' 
in 1890 was a nearer step toward native representation 
and social reform ; Norway, in 1891, following the lead of 
the patriots Bjornson and Sverdrup and other champions 
of Norwegian liberty, moved boldly for independence and 
popular sovereignty; in 1893 England and the United 



WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 357 

States agreed to peacefully " arbitrate " the long-standing 
seal-killing disputes of the Behring Sea ; and in 1 894 the 
Hawaiian people overturned their monarchy, and declared 
the republic of Hawaii. That same year the new method 
of settling international disputes by arbitration rather than 
by war was tried even by the volcanic South American 
nations ; and the khedive of Egypt, looking toward inde- 
pendent action, sought to free himself from British control. 
In 1 893 universal suffrage was established under a peculiar 
plan in Belgium ; but it was the people's victory. Even 
in Russia, in spite of the horrors of Siberian exile, — some- 
times cloaked under so gentle a phrase as " enforced resi- 
dence by administrative authority," — the accession of a 
new czar, Nicholas H., in 1894, was the beginning of a new 
drift toward democracy, even though the new ruler declared 
it an "absurd dream." In Sweden the form of address to 
the monarch became, instead of the divine-right grand- 
iloquence of " Most Gracious Majesty," the simpler and 
more republican formula, "To the king," — a significant 
change. In 1893 Bohemia, that "lemon squeezed by 
Austria," as one of her patriot sons called the ancient 
kingdom, very nearly secured home rule and the right of 
suffrage, and did, in fact, gain a distinct advance in repre- 
sentation ; and even Austria itself, that empire of slow 
progress and mixed nationalities, though advancing only 
by that snail-like " forward, march ! " of " two steps for- 
ward and one back," gradually slipped on toward liberal 
methods and a union through concession. 

So, as the " nineties " grew into middle age, the world 
assumed a more steadfast attitude toward peace and na- 
tionality. Europe was no longer the absolute aristocracy 



358 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

of the earlier years of the century ; there were parhamen- 
tary government in the west, constitutional government in 
the centre, and even a diluted despotism in the east. 1890 
to 1895 saw in Europe a distinct advance upon the old 
illiberal and tyrannical ways, and definitely announced "the 
fact of our time," as Benjamin Kidd called it — "the 
arrival of Democracy." 

Across the sea, democracy was establishing itself still 
more securely. Seventy millions of Americans, in the 
great republic they had founded and maintained, gave the 
impulse to the rest of the vast continent, where forty mil- 
lions of people, in sixteen sister republics, stretched from 
the Rio Grande to " the Horn ; " while to the north, from 
the Bay of Fundy to " the far-flung, fenceless prairie " of 
"the great lone land," the Dominion of Canada was a 
democracy in everything but name. 

Still following the dream of Columbus, and seeking the 
east by way of the west, democracy, crossing America, 
had bridged the sea to Asia ; and in the islands of Japan 
was developing with surprising vigor the ideas of constitu- 
tional nationality. Too vigorous, indeed, was this develop- 
ment for the overgrown and reactionary neighbor of the 
island empire ; and when, in 1 894, there was trouble in 
China's vassal kingdom, Korea, that "hermit nation " pro- 
claimed its independence, and solicited the help of Japan. 
Japan's energy enraged China's obstinacy; and at once 
progress and reaction were pitted against one another in 
the conflict known as the China-Japan War of 1894, — forty 
millions against four hundred millions ! Again was the 
value of modern methods and unity of forces demonstrated. 
For China, relying upon her very "bigness," and supreme in 



WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 359 

her confidence of her own superiority and traditions, showed 
herself to be no match at all for a people so persevering, 
so energetic, and so adaptable as the Japanese ; up-to-date 
methods faced old crudities of conflict in war, and on land 
and sea China was absolutely overmastered and defeated ; 
and the same spirit of energy which marked the age of 
Edison triumphed in the modern combat between the 
David and Goliath of the Oriental world. For it was west- 
ern civilization that had trained the eye and drilled the 
arm of Japan, — that very civilization which China spurned 
as ''foreign" and contemptible, and would have none of. 
German, French, and American officers had schooled the 
Japanese in the science of modern war ; leading officers of 
the Japanese navy were Annapolis men ; and once again, 
in the East, as had been not unfrequently displayed in the 
West, was shown the truth of the old Bible saying, that 
" God hath chosen the weak things of the world to con- 
found the things which are mighty ; " only in this case 
weakness had been drilled into strength, and might had 
been lost in self-conceit. 

Mightier things even than governments and nations were 
overthrown about this time by the spirit of modern energy. 
The progress, or rather, the application of scientific inves- 
tigation, which so filled the closing decade of the Nine- 
teenth Century, defied even disease and death in its bold 
stand for improvement. Medicine and surgery made dis- 
tinct advances. In 1890 the German Dr. Koch an- 
nounced his discovery of a remedy for consumption, and 
the Frenchman Louis Pasteur boldly attempted the cure 
of hydrophobia by inoculation. The use of anaesthetics 
and antiseptics, developed into wonderful exactness, "robbed 



360 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 

the surgeon's knife " of its terrors, while English and 
American physicians showed that even the dangers of 
chloroform might be prevented by proper treatment. A 
reform in hospital methods was one of the greatest tri- 
umphs of the early nineties ; the Geneva Cross grew into 
the still nobler Red Cross Societies to ameliorate the 
horrors of the battle-field ; while the theory of disease 
germs revolutionized the formerly accepted laws of sanita- 
tion, and lessened the terrors of what were known as 
zymotic diseases — that is, infectious and contagious sick- 
nesses, like small-pox, diphtheria, and their dread associates. 
The care of the body and the strengthening of the mind 
are almost kindred advances, and the era of new methods 
in medicine and surgery was also the era of new methods 
in education. "Aliens, idiots, women, and Indians not 
taxed" — even in progressive America these, in the early 
days of the century, had been excluded classes, so far as 
representation and suffrage were concerned. But in 1890 
how great was the change! All over the civilized world 
aliens were protected by reasonable laws ; lunatics and 
criminals were cared for by wiser, less brutal, and more 
reformatory methods ; Indians and conquered tribes were 
dealt with more justly; and woman found entrance into 
nearly all the occupations and professions, while the mar- 
vellous advance of the new system of " Higher Education " 
raised her to a position of possibility in which culture and 
intelligence recognized no limitations of sex in effort and 
achievement. In nothing, probably, did the Nineteenth 
Century display more clearly its spirit of democratic and 
universal progress than in its improvement in the condition 
of woman throughout the civilized world. 



WHEN MEN BEGAN TO PROVE VALUE OF THINGS. 36 1 

"I have no fear," said Mr. Gladstone in 1893, "lest the 
woman should encroach upon the power of man ; the fear 
I have is lest we should invite her, unwillingly, to tres- 
pass upon the delicacy, the purity, the refinement, the ele- 
vation, of her own nature, which are the present sources 
of its power." The voice of woman was, however, potent 
in many ways in many lands ; and in the United States of 
America, leader in democratic reform, the right of woman 
to a voice in government, especially in matters of taxation 
and education, was in 1895 recognized and granted, to a 
greater or less extent, in twenty-four of the fifty States 
and Territories. 

So with a distinct advance and a direct application of all 
the new methods in thought, work, and life, the Nineteenth 
Century drew toward its close. Problems were still un- 
solved, wrongs still unrighted, evils still predominant. 
But " the silent and strenuous rivalry " which occupied the 
energies of the world worked for good rather than for 
evil; and the "end of the century," the j^// de siecie, as 
people called this close of a period, was putting the work 
of man in his hundred years of development to practical 
use, while the strengthing and bracing influence of energy, 
application, and endeavor were leaving an enduring mark, 
not only upon the history of the time, but upon the resist- 
less progress of the race. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 
(Frojti i8gj to igoo.) 

" npHE silent and strenuous rivalry of the race," as the 
1 conditions of the Nineteenth Century have been 
called, had attained a new height of effort in 1895. The 
wars for nationalism were over. Armed peace prevailed 
in Europe ; bitter rivalries were smothered by the fear of 
man ; and though the continent of Europe was still mutu- 
ally antagonistic, and national distrust prevailed, peace and 
neighborliness were nevertheless forced on all the Chris- 
tian nations by the very condition of things ; and while the 
cost of standing armies, enormous navies, and mighty arma- 
ments kept the people poor, it also kept them peaceful, 
save as political and social upheavals worried them all into 
watchfulness of each other, and forced them into an intelli- 
gent growth in manhood, that came even in spite of them- 
selves. 

" To the thoughtful mind, the outlook at the close of the 
Nineteenth Century," wrote Benjamin Kidd in 1895, "is 
profoundly interesting. History can furnish no parallel to 
it. The problems which loom across the threshold of the 
new century surpass in magnitude any that civilization has 
hitherto had to encounter. We seem to have reached a 
time in which there is abroad in men's minds an instinctive 
feeling that a definite stage in the evolution of Western 

362 




TTPES OF THE ) Pasteur Kipling 

. __ __ _^,„^., William OF Germany Nicholas of Russia 

AGE OF EDISON ) Edison Whistler 



HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 363 

civilization is drawing to a close, and that we are entering 
on a new era," 

That new era was the outcome of the democratic ad- 
vance and the wonders of industrial inventions that had so 
notably marked the Nineteenth Century, These new con- 
ditions, each of which existed because of the other, were 
themselves the outgrowth of the New Europe that suc- 
ceeded the downfall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 18 14. The 
vast changes which, after that date, came to the world, 
were because the impelling necessity of self-preservation 
had aroused men to the development of practical science, 
industrial expansion, and the application of mechanical in- 
ventions. Steam in manufacturing and agriculture ; scien- 
tific methods in the construction of roads, bridges, viaducts, 
and tunnels ; improved methods of mining and handling 
such earth-products as coal, metals, and petroleum ; and the 
application of machinery to the further working of these 
products by furnaces, steam hammers, machinery, and 
tools ; marvellous development in the practical usefulness of 
the two greatest forces of modern civilization in labor-saving 
processes of steam and electricity, so that, in 1900, steam 
had usurped the place of water, wind, and horse-power in 
every department of production and locomotion, while 
electricity, by furnishing direct and marvellous means of 
instantaneous communication and illumination, had abso- 
lutely altered the conditions of life ; remarkable advances 
in chemical knowledge, — matches, fertilizers, gas-lighting, 
sugar, colorings, photography, explosives, medicines, bleach- 
ing and tanning, preserved and condensed foods, wood-pulp, 
and other equally useful productions ; the scientific advance 
in farming, agricultural methods, cattle- and stock-breeding 



364 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

and raising, with the remarkable applications of anaesthet- 
ics and antiseptics, which have practically conquered pain, 
— all these, as Professor Seignobos declares, have materi- 
ally " affected international politics by changing the practi- 
cal conditions of government, and transforming the con- 
ditions of society." 

" Only one hundred years ago," says Benjamin Kidd, 
" nations and communities were as distant from each other 
in time as they were at the beginning of the Christian era. 
Since then the ends of the world have been drawn together, 
and civilized society is becoming one vast, highly organized 
interdependent whole — the wants and requirements of 
every part regulated by economic laws, bewildering in their 
intricacy — with a nervous system of five million miles of 
telegraph wire, and an arterial system of railways and ocean 
steamships, along which the currents of trade and popula- 
tion flow with a rapidity and regularity previously unima- 
gined," 

" The old bonds of society," he continues, " have been 
loosened ; old forces are becoming extinct ; whole classes 
have been swept away, and new classes have arisen. The 
great army of industrial workers throughout the world is 
almost entirely a growth of the past hundred years. Vast 
displacements of population have taken place and are still 
taking place. The expansion of towns, one of the m.ost 
remarkable features of the industrial revolution, still con- 
tinues unabated, no less in America and Australia than in 
England, Germany, and France ; and civilization is every- 
where massing together, within limited areas, large popula- 
tions, extremely sensitive to innumerable social stimuli 
which did not exist at the beginning of the century. The 



HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 365 

air is full of new battle-cries, of the sound of the gathering 
and marshalling of new forces, and the reorganization of 
old ones." 

This is an excellent "snap-shot" at the condition of the 
world in 1895. Revolutions and the struggle for nation- 
ality and union had done a wonderful work for human 
progress. But the Franco-German war of 1870 was the 
last of these national crises. The reactionary period had 
ended ; the period of absolutism had given place to democ- 
racy ; and revolutions were those of peace and progress, 
rather than of personal and imperial rivalry. The Tolstoi 
theory had affected war as well as society ; and conflicts 
were waged for what are called ''altruistic " or beneficial 
reasons, instead of for private and personal aggrandizement. 
The one-man power had given place to the power of the 
people ; and even the last of these ambitious individuals — 
Bismarck and William II. in Germany, Disraeli in England, 
and Napoleon III. in France — had helped in this transition, 
and stood for " democratic monarchy " rather than indi- 
vidual despotism. The sovereignty of the people had taken 
the place of the personality of the sovereign. 

The world, however, was by no means at peace. Every 
year from 1895 to 1900 saw a new war; but the purposes 
for which those wars were waged differed altogether, as I 
have said, from the wars of the first three-quarters of the 
century. 1895 saw the close of the war between China and 
Japan, and the beginning of the war that ultimately drove 
Spain from America, when the patriots of Cuba made their 
final stand for liberty ; 1896 saw the revolt of the Armenian 
subjects of Turkey against the cruelties of the Sultan, and 
their appeal to the Christian nations of Europe ; 1897 saw 



366 THE STORY OF THE N-INETEENTH CENTURY. 

the war between Greece and Turkey for the readjustment 
of boundaries and the protection of the persecuted ; 1 898 
witnessed a war between Spain and the United States, 
waged for the liberation of Cuba from the Spanish yoke ; 
1 899 saw the triumph of arbitration over war in the case of 
the Venezuela dispute, and it also saw the outbreak of war 
in South Africa, which in 1900 became a struggle for civili- 
zation and Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the dark continent, 
against the obstinacy of limited ideas, and the last of the 
one-man power in a so-called but despotic republic — the 
stubborn mountaineers of the Transvaal pitted against the 
power and will of progressive England. 

The world was by no means at peace ; but would uni- 
versal peace mean universal progress .'' The young Em- 
peror of Russia evidently thought so, though with a million 
armed men at his back; for in August, 1898, he sent to all 
the powers of the world a proposal for an international 
agreement for disarmament and universal peace. The 
principles of Tolstoi the philanthropist were bearing fruit 
in the last place of all where such proposals might be ex- 
pected — his own homeland of autocratic Russia. 

"The maintenance of universal peace and a possible re- 
duction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all 
nations in the present condition of affairs all over the 
world," said Nicholas the Czar, supreme lord of one hun- 
dred governments, and one hundred and thirty millions of 
people, " represent the ideal aims towards which the effort 
of all governments should be directed. . . . The present 
moment seems a very favorable one for seeking, by way of 
international discussion, the most effective means of assur- 
ing for all peoples the blessings of a real and lasting peace, 



HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 36/ 

and above all things for fixing a limit to the progressive 
development of present armaments. ... It is the su- 
preme duty, at the present moment, of all states to put 
some limit to these unceasing armaments, and to find means 
of averting the calamities which threaten the whole world." 

Actuated by this humanitarian desire, the Czar proposed, 
"to all governments accredited to the Imperial Court," 
the meeting of a conference to discuss this grave problem. 
" Such a conference," he concluded, " with God's help, 
would be a happy augury for the opening of a new century. 
It would powerfully concentrate the efforts of all states 
which sincerely wish to see the triumph of the grand idea 
of universal peace over the elements of trouble and dis- 
cord. It would, at the same time, bind their agreements 
by the principles of law and equity which support the 
security of states and the welfare of peoples." 

This proposition from the Czar of all the Russias sounded 
as grand and noble as, coming from such a bayonet-upheld 
autocrat, it seemed astounding. But the powers of the 
world expressed their sympathy with his aims, and agreed 
to his proposal for a Universal Peace Conference, which 
duly assembled at the Hague, the capital of Holland, in 
May, 1899, ^^^ ^^^ composed of delegates officially ap- 
pointed by the governments of twenty-six of the nations 
of the world, from St. Petersburg to Washington, includ- 
ing even the old-time Oriental despotisms of China and 
Japan. 

It seemed, indeed, as if the vision of Tennyson, sixty 
years before, was about to be fulfilled — 

" When the -war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are furled 
In the Parliament of man, the federation of the world." 



368 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

It seemed as if the dream of Longfellow, the American 
peace-lover, as he stood in the arsenal at Springfield in 
1843, was to be practically attempted : 

" Were half the power that fills the world with tenor, 
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, 
Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
There were no need of arsenals and forts." 

"The power that fills the world with terror" was as 
much more terrible in 1899 than it was in 1843 as fifty 
years of advance in the making of guns and explosives 
could render it. The armaments of the world, which the 
Czar wished the nations to limit or curtail, amounted in 
1899 to four million men, on a "peace" footing, with re- 
serves to be called on in case of war of ten times that 
number and a " fighting population " many times greater ; 
the naval strength, in actual service and in reserve, was 
proportionate to this tremendous land total, while the forts 
and land and water defences were equally enormous. The 
" wealth bestowed on camps and courts," to provide for 
and maintain the armed peace of the world, was almost 
beyond calculation ; the expenditures in the United States 
alone for army and navy support during the one hundred 
and ten years of the life of the republic (from 1789 to 
1899) exceeded seven thousand millions of dollars ; the 
mind can scarcely grasp the total war expenditures of the 
world during the one hundred years of the busy and pro- 
gressive but often pugnacious Nineteenth Century, which 
had, thanks to the Czar of Russia, the prospect of universal 
peace at its close. 

But this peace was not at once to come. Even while 
the Russian Czar was sending abroad his invitation to a 



HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 369 

peace conference, two of the great powers of the world 
were pitted in a war for humanity's sake. 

The long continued struggle of the Cubans for relief 
from Spanish tyranny — a tyranny which for a hundred 
years had been an eyesore to the world and especially to 
Cuba's nearest neighbor, the United States — broke out 
again in open rebellion in 1895, and so disturbed com- 
mercial and industrial relations between Cuba and the 
United States, to say nothing of the conscience of a nation 
schooled to independence, that the United States, in 1896, 
demanded reforms from Spain, and when these were 
refused, or seen to be only superficial, threatened armed 
intervention. In February, 1898, an American battleship 
sent into Havana harbor for humane purposes and the 
protection of American interests, was destroyed by a sub- 
marine mine, with great loss of life ; and naturally Spain 
was held accountable for the outrage. Thereupon the 
United States insisted upon the withdrawal of Spain from 
Cuba ; and when this was refused, war was declared. The 
six great powers of Europe, in the interests of peace and 
arbitration, begged the president of the United States to 
agree to a peaceful settlement ; but the time for that had 
passed, and the president declared that only forcible meas- 
ures could end a situation that had become " intolerable." 
Regulars and volunteers were assembled in an army of 
invasion ; the naval and military forces of the United States 
were hurried into action ; and in just one hundred and thir- 
teen days — from the declaration of the war on April 1 2 
to the signing of the preliminary treaty of peace on 
August 12 — the brief but vigorous humanitarian war 
against Spain had secured all for which war was waged. 



370 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Cuba was wrested from the grasp of Spain, and put on the 
road toward independence, and the heirs to the glory of 
Columbus had lost their imperial heritage after four 
hundred years of tyrannical possession. 

But the war for the liberation of Cuba had done more. 
In spite of itself the Republic of the United States was 
forced from its continental isolation to the position of a 
world power. The thunder of Dewey's guns at Manila 
announced the entrance of a new competitor in the field of 
foreign authority and action ; and by the treaty of peace 
with Spain, signed by the President of the United States 
on the sixth of February, 1899, the great American Re- 
public became, almost in spite of itself, a colony-owning 
nation. The Philippines, and Tutiula of the Samoan group ; 
Hawaii, annexed in July, 1898 ; Porto Rico, and the small 
Pacific islands of Guam and Wake, were ceded to and oc- 
cupied by the United States ; and ten million people of 
alien blood and speech came under the protection of the 
Stars and Stripes. Cuba was freed, and, under American 
tutelage, was led onward to a secure and stable indepen- 
dence ; and a war begun for humanity ended in colonial 
empire. 

Colonial possession and permanence were giving new 
labors and new duties to other nations of the world. In 
1895 thirty-eight thousand Outlanders, or foreign residents 
of the Dutch Republic of South Africa, where wonderful 
mining properties had been developed since 1880, peti- 
tioned the Volksraad, or Dutch government, of the South 
African Republic, for better representation and a redress 
of grievances. Their petition was denied ; and when the 
Outlanders endeavored to enforce their demand, a hasty 



HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 37 1 

and ill-timed incursion into the Transvaal in 1896, led by 
Dr. Jameson of the British South African Company, 
brought about unfortunate complications that hindered the 
promised reforms, and led finally, in October, 1899, to a 
war for possession and right of suzerainty between the 
Transvaal Republic and Great Britain. The South Afri- 
can Republics were, while practically independent, by agree- 
ment subject to the over-lordship of the Queen of England 
— in other words, they were self-governing vassals. But the 
predominant influence of one self-willed and remarkable 
man, Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal, pitted 
against the equally predominant influence of another and 
equally determined man, Cecil Rhodes, of Kimberley, 
forced the burgher republic into a war for independence ; 
and the Nineteenth Century, which opened in the struggle 
of a people for independence, closed in much the same way. 

But between the France of 1799, battling for progress, 
and the South African Republic of 1899, struggling 
against it, the difference is vast ; and Paul Kruger, of the 
Transvaal, the last leader of limitation, could scarcely hope 
to stand successfully in the pathway of that world develop- 
ment for which England stands. To the mad dash of 
Cervera, the Spaniard, through the fiery gauntlet of San- 
tiago, and the heroic stand of the Afrikander, Cronje, "the 
old lion of the veldt," ringed about by British guns, the 
world owes and will ever pay the tribute of praise for 
dauntless valor ; but alike the cause of Spain and that of 
the Boers of South Africa were against the spirit of the 
age, and God permits no obstacle long to bar the onward 
march of civilization. 

A march against obstacles is always more triumphant 



3/2. THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

and self-helpful than an unopposed advance ; and even when 
1895 had brought the Nineteenth Century to the high 
plane of achievement, there were obstacles to surmount 
and barriers to clear away. And these barriers were not 
always thrown up by the ignorant and timid — the natural 
foes of progress ; they were raised by the backwardJook- 
ing statesmen and thinkers in every land (the Tories of 
the world), who " clave to the way of their fathers ; " or, 
like Ephraim of old, were "joined to their idols," and 
would neither accept nor follow the beckoning hand of the 
new century. There were doctors of the old school, who, 
though mighty men in their profession, yet absolutely op- 
posed the advance and blessings of anaesthetics and anti- 
septics, those marvellous destroyers of pain ; there were 
scientists who placed phrenology above vaccination as a 
help to man, arrogantly denying the value of a discovery 
that had almost banished from the earth smallpox, that 
scourge of all the centuries before the Nineteenth ; there 
were well-meaning but short-sighted statesmen and patri- 
ots who believed in the selfishness of isolation and limita- 
tion rather than in the development that shrinks the ocean 
space into ferry crossings, and brings into closer touch the 
peoples and nations of the world ; who, learning only wrong 
lessons from the past, were, like the timid lover of Mon- 
trose's verse : 

" He either fears his fate too much, 
Or his deserts are small, 
That dares not put it to the touch. 
To gain or lose it all ! " 

There were those, old enough to know better, who believed 
in the past so implicitly — even though the story of the 



HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 373 

Nineteenth Century is fairly punctuated with constitutional 
changes — that they would not admit progress possible to 
that greatest of all the Constitutions of the world, but of 
which Franklin, greatest of all the philosophers of his day, 
said, as he signed it: " It is not perfect; it has many faults." 

So, through the last years of the century, objectors, 
critics, and croakers were always in evidence — from those 
who sneered at the triumphs of electricity, and repeated 
the story of Stephenson and the cow on the track, to those 
who made barbarism no bar to independence, misquoted 
Lincoln and Jefferson, and misjudged Cromwell. But the 
trend of the world was, fortunately, away from the pessi- 
mist' and the fossil. The world of 1900 exists because of 
progressive thought and action ; and, as James Russell 
Lowell said in his noble essay on Democracy, " An appeal 
to the reason of the people has never been known to fail, 
in the long run." 

The years from 1895 to 1900 saw Cuba in revolt, and 
Armenia protesting against persecution and massacre ; 
they saw arbitration successful over the unnecessary 
threat of war in both hemispheres, and a tendency to a 
closer friendship among the English-speaking races of the 
world ; they saw attempts toward international adjustment, 
church union, postal union, commercial union, and univer- 
sal peace ; but they also saw the rashness of selfishness in 
South Africa, war between Turkey and Greece over " old 
scars," and the intervention of Europe in favor of the 
" unspeakable Turk," rather than the liberty-loving Greek ; 
they saw assassination in high places, in Spain, Austria, and 
Italy, in Mexico, Brazil, and Persia, in France, and China, 
and the Balkans ; they saw the baffling injustice of the 



374 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Dreyfus case, a blot upon the fair name of France ; they 
saw the advance toward union of the repubHcs of Central 
America, in 1896, and the subsequent collapse of the 
*' United States of Central America," through jealousies 
and selfishness ; they saw, greatest of all in effort and 
failure, the assembling at the Hague, in May, 1898, of the 
Universal Peace Conference proposed by the young Czar 
of Russia, and its adjournment in July, with little accom- 
plished beyond the proposed establishment of a Court of 
Arbitration for the settlement of disputes between nations 
and the reaffirmation of the Monroe Doctrine by the dele- 
gates from the United States. Universal Peace was thus 
pushed off as a problem for the twentieth century to solve. 
Success, which so often comes because of failure, had 
marked the century even to the close. Success and fail- 
ure in politics, diplomacy, government, statesmanship, and 
international effort had been paralleled by success and fail- 
ures in economic, social, scientific, and material endeavors. 
Capital, roused to its own defence by the aggressions of 
labor, answered union with combines, strikes with trusts, 
competition/ with syndicates, and legislation with legisla- 
tion. Opposing parties in the United States loudly pro- 
claimed against trusts as a " discrimination in favor of 
>yealth and against individual enterprise," " hurtful to the 
people and something to be prohibited and abolished ; " 
but before the close of 1899 there were five hundred of 
these combines, consolidations, pools, or agreements, popu- 
larly termed " trusts " known to exist in the United States J 
and in all civilized countries, where speculation crowds 
upon production ; " the new aristocracy of personal wealth,'' 
as Professor Seignobos characterizes this energy of banker. 



HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 375 

manufacturer, and merchant, " had made a place for itself 
m politics by furnishing the main stay of the liberal parties, 
and trying to guide the democratic mass of the nation." 

The application of the triumphs of science to the grow- 
ing needs of the world, which especially marked this last 
decade of the century — the age of Edison, as we have 
chosen to term it — had, however, more success than fail- 
ures to its credit. The development of electricity was the 
chief marvel of the age, especially when combined with the 
advance in engineering. As there was no space too wide 
to be spanned or tunnelled, so there was no force too 
great to be controlled. Projects were considered or com- 
pleted which the mid-century would have deemed impos- 
sible, and the third quarter stupendous. Niagara was 
forced to play the part of a great mill-dam, and turn the 
busy wheels, and light the shops and streets of Buffalo 
twenty-two miles away — " perhaps the most stupendous 
engineering effort ever undertaken ; " it was proposed to 
turn the vast Saraha desert into a fertile garden by irri- 
gation, even as the Arizona deserts in America had been 
reclaimed ; to bridge or tunnel the English Channel ; to 
connect by railway Cairo and the Cape in Africa, and Van- 
couver and Patagonia in America, even as Russian enter- 
prise, when the century closed, was already pushing for- 
ward the tracks of the great Siberian railway, and join- 
ing St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, the greatest railway 
scheme attempted, by which, and with its connecting 
lines of railway and steamship, it will be possible, in 1904, 
to go "round the world in thirty days." Telegraph lines 
were stretching in every direction — into the heart of 
darkest Africa, across, around, and beneath the world ; and 



l']6 THE STORY OF THfi NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

the close of the century had even witnessed the marvel of 
wireless telegraphy and communication between ship and 
shore by waves of sound and currents of transmission. 
Indeed, there seemed nothing too vast to comprehend, 
too wonderful to attempt, or too impossible to achieve. 
In 1899 the world was seamed by four hundred thousand 
miles of railway tracks, joined and underlaced by one 
hundred and sixty thousand miles of submarine cable, 
crossed by four million miles of telegraph wire, and 
brought ear to ear with millions of miles of telephone, 
while those new servants of man, the electric light and 
the photographic camera, were accomplishing marvels for 
the moral as well as the commercial growth of the world. 
The electric spark, which has diminished crime by flood- 
ing the dark places with the tell-tale light, was also in 
1896, by the discovery of the X-rays by Professor Ront- 
gen of Wiirzburg, made to penetrate and register, by the 
help of photography, matter, and substances never before 
revealed to the eye of man. " With the exception of anti- 
septics and anaesthetics," says Professor Thompson, "no 
discovery of the century has done so much for operative 
surgery." 

The linotype which sets and stereotypes, line upon line, 
bars of type ready for the press ; the invention of the 
Frenchman, Chassagne, for actually photographing in 
colors ; the discovery by the Englishman, Professor Ram- 
sey, of the element known as liquid air, " a fifth constituent 
of the atmosphere," with which wonderful things are 
possible ; the revolutionizing of ship-building by the 
"whale-backs," and of house-building by the towering 
"sky-scrapers," — these and many other remarkable ad- 



HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 377 

vances in discovery, invention, and application, marked 
the decade of energy, the era of Edison, the end of the 
century. 

Edison and Tesla, Pasteur and Rontgen, Koch and 
Joule, Marconi and Gray, Bell and Kelvin, and a score of 
investigators, discoverers, and adapters, helped to make the 
age the "very top and crown" of scientific progress. 
Nansen, and Peary, and Wellman, and Borchgrevink 
forced still farther north and south into the ice and cold 
of the arctic and the antarctic ; while the novel plan of 
Andree, the Frenchman, to wrest the secret of the pole 
by balloon expedition, in 1898, ended in still greater mys- 
tery, for the foolhardy explorer was never heard of again. 

While the unbeaten tracks of the earth were being 
trodden by inquisitive feet, inquisitive and trained eyes were 
searching the heavens with such mighty "finders" as the 
Yerkes and Lick telescopes, while deep-sea soundings and 
investigations added to the knowledge of hidden things ; so 
that, indeed, "the heavens above, the earth beneath, and 
the waters under the earth " grew more and more but as 
open books to be read and translated by man. 

The gold of the Klondike, unearthed in cold Alaska, 
where a section five hundred miles long by one hundred 
wide was found, in 1898, to be teeming with the yellow 
metal, sent thousands of skilled and unskilled adventurers 
to suffer, and succeed or fail, in the new " diggings," — one 
of the largest and richest mining areas in the world, but 
one of the severest and most remote. 

But what will man not dare for gain and gold ? It is 
the spirit that has set mankind in motion since Aryan 
migration first peopled Europe, and the eagles of Rome 



378 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

reconquered the golden East. It is the basis of exploration, 
occupation, colonization, and development, making citizens 
of the homeless, and patriots of the wanderers, from the 
days of the Golden Fleece and the fables of Cathay, to the 
development of California, Australia, the Transvaal, and 
the even more unfamiliar "waste places of the world." It 
is responsible for the "scramble for Africa," the expansion 
of the nations, and the new boundaries of the earth. 

A famous French statesman and financier of the eigh- 
teenth century said, long before the American Declaration 
of Independence, " Colonies are Hke fruits that cling to 
trees only till they ripen. As soon as America can take 
care of herself, she will do what Carthage did." 

Even before America was quite ready to take care of her- 
self she made the foward stride to independence. But, doing 
as Carthage did, she also set a new lesson for England and 
other colonizing nations of Europe to read ; and they read 
it — all save Spain. For, save by Spain, the monumental 
folly of England in 1776 has not since been attempted. 

As a result, the spheres of influence marked out by the 
civilized nations of to-day have well-nigh appropriated the 
world. The colonies and dependencies of European 
powers are in every zone. Denmark has firm footing in 
Greenland, and Iceland, and the West Indies ; France is 
dispersed through Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, 
over a total colonial area of two and one-half million square 
miles ; Germany governs a million square miles of territory, 
with over ten millions of colonial subjects, in Africa, Asia, 
and the Pacific ; little Holland, or the Kingdom of the Neth- 
erlands, as it prefers to call itself, has colonial possessions 
in the East and West Indies, covering sixty times as much 



HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 379 

area, with seven times as great a population, as the Lillipu- 
tian mother country ; Italy, a new-comer among colonizing 
nations, has dependencies along the Red Sea and the Somali 
coast ; Portugal, like Holland, small in home dominions, 
has colonial possessions in Africa and Asia embracing eight 
hundred thousand square miles, and more than nine milhon 
inhabitants ; Russia, that mighty autocracy, which claims 
possession of one-seventh of the land surface of the globe, 
and knows itself only as "all the Russias " — Russia in 
Europe, Russia in Asia, Finland, and Poland — counts 
nothing it absorbs as a colony, but as Russia, and holds its 
dependencies in Asia, Bokhara, Khiva, and Port Arthur as 
vassal rather than colonial possessions ; Spain, once the 
greatest of colonizing nations, found, in 1900, its foreign 
dependencies shrunken into narrow limits in Africa and 
the Pacific, two hundred and forty thousand square miles, 
and less than one hundred and seventy-five thousand inhab- 
itants, against four hundred thousand with eleven million 
inhabitants in 1898; while Turkey, still holding a weak 
clutch on Egypt and Tripoli, just came within the limit of 
colonial ownership ; the United States, successors equally 
by the might of right and the right of might to the colonial 
possessions of Spain, found itself, in 1900, not by inten- 
tion but by circumstances, master of colonial possessions 
and protector of possible republics among the Atlantic and 
Pacific islands, Cuba and Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Philip- 
pines, Samoa and Guam, two hundred thousand square 
miles of territory, and twelve and a half millions of people ; 
while, greater than all other nations combined in extent of 
area, diversity of location, and number of inhabitants, the 
British Empire stands out as the giant of modern coloniza- 



38o THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

tion and civilization ; in Europe and Asia, in Africa and 
Australia, in America and the Isles of the Sea, Great 
Britain holds vast dependencies, and " the meteor flag of 
England " floats in possession in every zone that girdles 
the globe, and in every wind that blows. "What is the 
Flag of England } " asked the foremost of living English 
writers. "Winds of the world declare!" and the four 
winds each m_ake answer-- North, South, East, and West : 

"The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night, 
The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light : 
What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare, 
Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there 1 

My basking sun-fish knows it, and wheeling albatross. 
Where the lone wave lights with fire beneath the Southern Cross. 
What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare. 
Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there ! 

The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild ass knows. 
The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows. 
What is the Flag of England ? Ye have but my sun to dare, 
Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there ! 

The dead, dumb fog hath wrapped it — the frozen dews have kissed — 
The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist. 
What is the Flag of England ? Ye have but my breath to dare. 
Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there 1 " 

So the English-speaking race from the days of Drake 
have gone forth to conquer drifts and seas, and sands and 
waves ; and, to-day, more than one-quarter of the popula- 
tion of the civilized world resides under the protection of 
the Flag of England ; and that little island kingdom, with 
its area of but one hundred and twenty thousand square 
miles and less than forty million inhabitants, dominates a 



HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 38 1 

world empire that includes twelve millions of area and four 
hundred millions of people. 

And what of the Speech of England — the conqueror of 
the world. In the eleventh century after Christ scarcely 
two million people were English-speaking ; at the close of 
the eighteenth century twenty-one million people called 
the English tongue their own ; at the opening of the twen- 
tieth century the English language is the native tongue of 
one hundred and sixty millions. Of the other dominating 
languages of the world, eighty millions speak Russian, 
eighty millions speak German, fifty-eight millions French, 
forty-four millions Spanish, and thirty-four millions Italian ; 
to-day, as a recent investigator declares, "the English lan- 
guage is in the ascendant, and ere long may be, if not the 
universal language, at least the tongue spoken by more 
persons than any other two languages. 

In this world absorption of speech and power, the re- 
public of the United States claims lot and part. The first 
of England's foreign possessions, the first also to break 
away and set England a new lesson in colonial rights and 
government, the stars and stripes of the American republic 
float in possession or protection over nearly four million 
miles of area and ninety millions of people. 

"These colonists," said Mr. Seeley, in his "Expansion of 
England," " which, when they parted from us did but fringe 
the Atlantic sea-board, and had but lately begun to push 
their settlements into the Valley of the Ohio, how steadily, 
how boundlessly, and with what self-reliance, have they 
advanced since ! They have covered with their States and 
Territories first the Mississippi Valley, next the Rocky 
Mountains, and, lastly, the Pacific Coast. They have made 



382 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

no difficulty of absorbing all the territory ; it has not 
shaken their political system. And they have never said, 
as, among us, even those who are not pessimists say of our 
colonies, that if they wish to secede, of course they can do 
so. On the contrary, they have firmly denied this right, 
and to maintain the unity of their vast state have sacri- 
ficed blood and treasure in unexampled profusion. They 
firmly refused to allow their union to be broken up, or to 
listen to the argument that a state is none the better for 
being very large." 

So the Nineteenth Century closes in Anglo-Saxon union 
and supremacy. What Napoleon as a world conqueror 
strove to dominate at the opening of the century, the 
sovereign people, led to democracy by the example of 
America and the steady onward course of England, have 
achieved at the end. 

Since 1814, when Napoleon fell, every state in Europe 
and many outside that world-possessing continent, have 
changed their political or social organization. " The nine- 
teenth century," says Professor Seignobos, "has been a 
time of internal revolution." 

It has been more than that : it has been a century of 
emancipation — emancipation of thought, of speech, of 
ideas, of manners, of methods, and of men. Personal gov- 
ernment has given place to democratic government, the 
sovereignty of the prince has become the sovereignty 
of the people, " and the word ' control ' has come to mean 
'rule.' " 

"The fact of our time which overshadows all others," 
says Benjamin Kidd, "is the arrival of Democracy. . . 
It is a new Democracy. . . To compare it with de- 



HOW THE CENTURY CLOSED. 383 

mocracies which held power under the ancient empires is to 
altogether misundertand both the nature of our civiliza- 
tion and the character of the forces that have produced it. 
The arrival of this new Democracy is the crowning result 
of an ethical movement in which qualities and attributes 
we have all been taught to regard as the very highest of 
which human nature is capable, find the completest ex- 
pression they have ever reached in the history of the race." 
In 1800 men rode in stage coaches, and in 1900 in auto- 
mobiles ; they carried flint and steel, where to-day they 
use the electric light ; they groaned beneath the surgeon's 
uncertain knife, took months to cross the ocean, had 
scarcely one newspaper a week, and lived in their own 
isolated, limited, small, and selfish fashion, save where a few 
aristocrats kept " open house ; " drunkenness was the fash- 
ion, duelling the only code of honor, and bigotry the rule. 
The laws of humanity were few, and kindness to the unfor- 
tunate, the unprotected, and to animals almost an uncertain 
quality ; slavery or serfdom was the normal condition of 
the majority of the world's people, and the crimes of 
to-day were scarcely even the vices of our grandsires : 
education was for the few, power was the prerogative of a 
handful of aristocrats, and the " submerged tenth " of 1900 
was the submerged nine-tenths of 1800. Men took but 
few pleasures, and took them seriously ; the days of the 
tallow-dip were the days of secrecy, superstition, and igno- 
rance. Sport was for the most part cruelty, and athletics 
were brutally undeveloped ; weakness was the fag of 
strength, and what we know as the "amenities of life" 
were as rare as courtesy and as little understood as the 
"mysteries" of science. 



384 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH . CENTURY. 

Look out over the bright, brilHant, progressive, and 
prosperous world that greets the twentieth century, and 
exclaim in the words of the psalmist and the first telegram : 
" What hath God wrought ! " 

This is a grand progress to have been a part of ; it 
is a grand achievement to have lived to see. Failures and 
drawbacks, the Nineteenth Century had in plenty ; but its 
successes far exceeded its failures ; absolute and steady 
progress was its record ; its story, one of triumphant 
advance. In literature, science, and art ; in invention, 
improvement, and possession ; in liberty, humanity, civil- 
ization, and law the Nineteenth Century stands, " the heir 
of all the ages in the foremost files of time ; " and in unity, 
in neighborliness, in brotherhood, and all the gentler and 
more refining, no less than in the strenuous and deter- 
mined ways of men this wonderful century, in spite of 
bickerings and jealousies, in spite of greed and arrogance, 
in spite of hates and feuds, in spite of selfishness and sus- 
picion, steps grandly in the advance as the flower and 
pride of all the centuries since Christ came to Bethlehem, 
and taught men, that Golden Rule which, after nine- 
teen hundred years of slow and sullen schooling, is to 
become the motive and creator of the great things which 
the new century holds in store for man. 



THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY. 



1799. Death of Washington, December 14; Napoleon First Consul of 
France, December 24 ; Mowing-machine patented in England. 

1800. Pius VII. pope of Rome, March 14 ; Napoleon crosses the Alps, 
May 17 ; Battle of Marengo, June 14. 

1801. Union of Great Britain and Ireland, January i ; Peace of Luneville, 
February 5 ; Alexander I. czar of Russia, March 24 ; French evacuate 
Egypt, September 2 ; Jefferson president of United States, March 4. 

1802. Peace of Amiens, March 27 ; Napoleon consul for life, August 3. 

1803. Cape of Good Hope restored to Dutch, February 21 ; Louisiana 
sold to the United States, April 30 ; England and France at war. May 
18 ; Battle of Assaye, September 23. 

1804. Napoleon emperor of the French, May 18 ; Saving banks established. 

1805. Napoleon king of Italy, May 26 ; Third coalition against France ; 
Battle of Ulm, October 17 ; Victory of Trafalgar and death of Nelson, 
October 21 ; Battle of Austerlitz, December 2 ; Peace of Pressburg, 
December 26. Lewis and Clarke's overland expedition to the Pacific. 

1806. Cape of Good Hope taken by English, January 8 ; Confederation 
of the Rhine, July 12 ; Holy Roman Empire dissolved, August 6 ; Death 
of Fox, September 18 ; Battle of Jena, October 14 ; Berlin decrees, 
November 21. 

1807. England abolishes slave-trade, March 25 ; Battle of Friedland, 
June 14 ; Peace of Tilsit, July 7 ; Fulton's steamboat makes first trip 
from New York to Albany, August 7 ; French invade Portugal, Novem- 
ber ■ Orders in Council, November ; Embargo Act, December. 

1808. Wellesley lands in Spain, August i ; Siege of Saragossa raised, 
August 4 ; Abolition of Spanish Inquisition, December 4. 

1809. Burial of Sir John Moore, January 16 ; Madison president of United 
States, March 4 ; Hofer's revolt in Tyrol, April 8 ; Napoleon excommu- 
nicated by the pope, June 10 ; Arrest of the pope, July 5 ; Battle of 

38s 



386 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Wagram, July 6 ; Peace of Vienna, October 14 ; Divorce of Empress 
Josephine, December 15. 

1810. Napoleon marries Maria Louisa of Austria, April i ; Wellington at 
Torres Vedras, October 10 ; Insanity of George III., November. 

181 1. Massacre of the Mamelukes, March i ; English conquer Java, 
August 26. 

1812. Wellington storms Ciudad Rodrigo, January 19; United States 
declares war against Great Britain, June 18; Napoleon declares war 
against Russia, June 22 ; Battle of Borodino, September 7; Burning of 
Moscow, September 16 ; Retreat from Moscow, October and November. 

1813. War of Liberation ; Battle of Liitzen, May 2 ; Perry's victory on 
Lake Erie, September 10; Wellington invades France, October 7 ; 
Battle of Leipsic, October 18 ; Street -lighting by gas, London. 

1814. Allies invade France, January ; Bolivar president of Venezuela, 
January i ; Capitulation of Paris, March 31 ; Abdication of Napoleon, 
April 1 1 ; Napoleon exiled to Elba, May 4 ; Americans invade Canada, 
July ; British capture and burn Washington, August 24 ; Congress of 
Vienna, November 3 ; Treaty of peace between United States and Great 
Britain, December 24 ; London Times uses steam printing-press ; 
Stephenson perfects the locomotive. 

1815. Jackson's victory at New Orleans, January 8 ; Napoleon escapes 
from Elba, February 26 ; Napoleon in Paris, March 20 ; Treaty of 
Vienna (Europe against Napoleon), March 25 ; Battle of Waterloo, June 
18; Second abdication of Napoleon, June 22; Napoleon arrives at St. 
Helena, October 16; Formation of Holy Alliance, September 26; Sec- 
ond Peace of Paris, November 20. 

1816. Cheap newspapers for the people started by Cobbett. 

1817. Monroe president of United States, March 4 ; Discoveries in 
spectrum analysis. 

1818. Bernadotte king of Sweden, February 6; Allies evacuate France, 
November 30 ; Steam navigation on the Great Lakes. 

1819. Florida ceded to United States by Spain, February 22 ; " Reform- 
ers " massacred at Manchester, August 16 ; First steamship crosses 
Atlantic. 

1820. George IV. king of England. January 22 ; Jesuits expelled from 
Russia, March 25 ; Carbonari revolt in Naples, July 2. 

1821. Revolution in Brazil, January; Insurrection in Greece, March 6; 
Independence of Brazil proclmmed, April 22 ; Death of Napoleon at St. 
Helena, May 5 ; Republic of Liberia founded ; Florida ceded to United 
States. 



TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY. 387 

1822. Greeks declare their independence, January i ; Iturbide emperor of 
Mexico, May 22 ; Dom Pedro emperor of Brazil, October 12. 

1823. Death of Pius VIL, August 20 ; Leo XIL elected pope, September 
28 ; Great Britain recognizes South American republics, October 30 ; 
British Anti-Slavery Society founded ; Mormonism founded. 

T824. Bolivar dictator of Peru, February 10 ; Death of Lord Byron at 
Missolonghi, April 18. 

1825. John Quincy Adams president of United States, March 4 ; Dutch 
East India ports opened to all nations, July 27 ; Independence of Biazil 
recognized, September 7 ; Nicholas I. czar of Russia, December i ; 
First steam voyage to India ; First railway in England, September 27. 

1826. Spaniards evacuate Peru, January ; Massacre of Janissaries at 
Constantinople, June 1 5 ; Death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, 
July 4 ; Brazil abolishes slave-trade, November 23 ; First railroad in 
United States. 

1827. Death of Pestalozzi, February 17 ; Erection of the kingdom of 
Greece, July 6 ; Death of Canning, August 8 ; Charles X. of France 
dissolves Chamber of Deputies, November 5 ; Battle of Navarino, 
October 27 ; Friction matches invented. 

1828. Wellington administration in England, January 25 ; Russia declares 
war against Turkey April 26 ; Corn- Law in England ; Test Act repealed. 

1829. Death of Leo XIL, February 10; Andrew Jackson president of 
United States, March 4; Peace of Adrianople, September 14 ; Suttee 
in India suppressed, December 14 ; Stephenson builds the " Rocket " 
locomotive. 

1830. Independence of Greece recognized by the Powers of Europe, Feb- 
ruary 3 ; William IV. king of England, June 26 ; French conquer Al- 
giers, July 5 ; Revolution in France, July 27 ; Flight of Charles X., July 
30; Abdication of Charles X., August 2 ; Louis Philippe, king of 
France, August 9 ; Insurrections and revolutions in Europe ; Liverpool 
and Manchester Railway opened, September 15 ; Independence of Bel- 
gium, November 18 ; Death of Pius VIL, November 30 ; Death of Boli- 
var, December 17. 

1831. Gregory XVI. elected pope February 2 ; Hereditary peerage abol- 
ished in France, December 29 ; McCormick invents reaping-machine. 

1832. Poland absorbed by Russia, February 26 ; Death of Goethe, March 
22; Death of Cuvier, May 13; Reform Bill passed, June 7; Otho king 
of Greece, August 30; Death of Sir Walter Scott, September 21 ; Nulli- 
fication in South Carolina. 

1833. First Reform Parliament of United Kingdom, January 29 ; Santa 



388 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Anna president of Mexico, April i8; Abolition of slavery in British 
colonies, August 28 ; Isabella II. queen of Spain, September 29. 

1834. Death of Lafayette, May 20 ; Poor Law Act (England) passed, 
August 14. 

1835. Ferdinand I. emperor of Austria, March 2 ; Texas revolts against 
Mexico, July; Death of Cobbett, June 18; Independence of Texas, 
December 22. 

1836. Thiers prime minister of France, February 22; Louis Napoleon at 
Strasburg, October 29. 

1837. Martin Van Buren president of United States, March 4 ; Victoria 
queen of England, June 20; Pillory abolished in England; Father Ma- 
thew begins his temperance refonn. 

1838. Death of Talleyrand, May 17; Independence of Peru, July 29; Re- 
bellion in Canada ends, November 17; ChSrtist meetings suppressed, 
December 12; International Copyright Act. 

1839. Daguerreotypes invented, January 9; Chartist riots at Birmingham, 
July 15; Christian VIII. king of Denmark, December 3; Pope pro- 
hibits slave-trade, December 3 ; English settle New Zealand ; Discovery 
of gold in Australia. 

1840. Penny-postage in England, January 10 ; Frederick William VI. 
king of Prussia, June 7 ; Louis Napoleon arrested at Boidogne, August 
6; William II. king of Holland, October 7 ; Remains of Emperor Na- 
poleon brought to France, November 30 ; Second funeral of Napoleon, 
December 15 ; First crank bicycle made. 

1841. Union of Upper and Lower Canada, February 10; William Henry 
Harrison president of United States, March 4 ; " Tracts for the Times " 
condemned in England, March 1 5 ; Death of President Harrison ; John 
Tyler president of United States, April 4 ; Prince of Wales bom, No- 
vember 9. 

1842. Corn-law passed, April 29; Great Chartist petition. May 2; Con- 
quest of Boers of Natal, June 26 ; Ashburton Treaty between United 
States and Great Britain, August 9; Death of Channing, October 2. 

1843. Natal annexed to Cape Colony, May; Arrest of O'Connell, Octo- 
ber 14. 

1844. Death of Thonvaldsen, March 24 ; Morse's first telegram. May 27 ; 
Brigham Young head of Mormon church, June 27. 

1845. Death of Sydney Smith, February 22 ; James Knox Polk president 
of United States, March 4 ; Sir John Franklin lost in the Arctic ; Mexico 
declares war against United States, June 4. 

1846. Escape of Louis Napoleon from France, May 26; Death of Greg- 



TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY. 389 

ory X VL, June i ; Treaty of Washington for Oregon boundary, June 1 5 ; 
Pius IX. elected pope, June 16; Repeal of English corn-law, June 26; 
New Mexico annexed to United States, August 23 ; "The Spanish Mar- 
riage," September; Morton administered ether, October 16. 

1847. Death of Sir John Franldin, June 1 1 ; Capture of city of Mexico, 
September 1 5 ; Death of Mendelssohn, November 4 ; Surrender of Abd- 
el-Kader, December 22 ; Mormons found Salt Lake City. 

1848. Year of revolutions ; Gold discovered in California, January ; Fred- 
erick VII. king of Denmark, January 20 ; Death of John Quincy Ad- 
ams, February 21 ; Revolution in France, Febmary 23 ; Abdication of 
Louis Philippe, February 24 ; French republic proclaimed, Febmary 
26 ; Abolition of slavery in French dominions, April 27 ; Treaty between 
Mexico and United States, May 19; Death of George Stephenson, Aug- 
ust 12; Louis Napoleon elected deputy, September 20 ; elected presi- 
dent of French republic, December 20 ; Simpson introduces chloroform. 

1849. Rush for gold to California; Zachary Taylor, president of United 
States, March 4 ; Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, March 24 ; Inde- 
pendence of Hungary proclaimed ; Kossuth appointed governor, April 
14; Defeat of Hungarians resignation of Kossuth, August 11. 

1850. Death of Calhoun, March 31 ; North German parliament at Erfurt, 
March 20 ; Death of Wordsworth. April 24 ; Death of Peel, July 2 ; 
Death of President Taylor; Millard Filmore president of United 
States, July 9 ; Death of Balzac, August 18; First Building and Loan 
Association formed. 

1851. International Exhibition opened at London, May i ; Death of 
Cooper, September 14 ; Coup d'dtat at Paris, December 2 ; Louis Napo- 
leon president for ten years, December 20. 

1852. Death of Thomas Moore, February 26 ; Death of Henry Clay, June 
29; Death of Wellington, September 14; Death of Daniel Webster, 
October 24 ; Louis Napoleon emperor of France, December 2 ; " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin " published. 

1853. FrankUn Pierce president of United States, March 4 ; Taiping 
rebellion in China; capture of Shanghai, Sepember 7. 

1854. France declares war against Russia, March 27 ; England declares 
war against Russia, March 28 ; Battle of Alma, September 20 ; Battle 
of Balaklava, October 25. 

1855. Sardinia declares war against Russia, January 26; Lord Palmerston, 
prime-minister of England, February 6 ; Death of Charlotte Bronte, 
March 31 ; Storming of the Malakoff, September 8; Alexander II. 
czar of Russia, March 2 ; Sebastopol captured, September 9. 



390 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

1856. Death of Heine, February 17; Treaty of Paris, March 30; Evacu- 
ation of Crimea, July 12. 

1857. Dred Scott decision, March 6 ; Sepoy mutiny in India, January, 
May; James Buchanan president of United States, March 4; Massacre 
at Cawnpore, July 15 ; Death of Beranger, July 16 ; First Atlantic Cable 
laid, and fails. August ; Death of Comte, September 5 ; Relief of Luck- 
now, September 25 ; English and French capture Canton, December 29 ; 
Kansas-Nebraska war, December, 

1858. "Great Eastern" launched, January 31 ; First message over new 
Atlantic cable, August 20 ; Commercial treaty between Great Britain 
and Japan, August 26 ; England assumes sovereignty of India, Septem- 
ber I ; Death of Robert Owen, November 17. 

1859. Italy declares war against Austria, April 27 ; Death of Humboldt, 
May 6 ; Battle of Magenta, June 4 ; Louis Napoleon and Victor Em- 
manuel enter Milan, June 8 ; Death of Metternich, June 1 1 ; Battle of 
Solferino, June 24 ; Treaty of Villa franca, July 7 ; Death of Washing- 
ton Irving, November 28 ; John Brown hanged for insurrection in Vir- 
ginia, December 2 ; Death of Macaulay, December 28. 

i860. Cavour prime-minister of new kingdom of Italy, Januaiy 21 ; Gar- 
ibaldi enters Palermo, May 27 ; Garibaldi proclaims Victor Emmanuel 
at Naples, May 27; Prince of Wales visits America; Secession of 
South Carolina, December 20 ; Japanese embassy in America. 

1861. William I. king of Prussia, January 2; Southern States secede 
from the Union, January, February ; Jefferson Davis president of 
Southern Confederacy, February 4 ; First Italian Parliament at Turin, 
February 18; Alexander czar of Russia, emancipates the serfs, March 
3 ; Abraham Lincoln president of the United States, March 4 ; Victor 
Emmanuel king of Italy, March 1 7 ; Bombardment of Fort Sumter, 
April 12; Great Britain and France recognize Confederate States as 
belligerents, June 15; Death of Cavour, June 6; Death of Mrs. Brown- 
ing, June 29; Battle of Bull Run, July 21 ; Seizure of British steamer 
" Trent," November 8 ; Confederate commissioners given up to Eng- 
land, December 28 ; Death of Prince Albert, prince consort of Eng- 
land, December 14. 

1862. Japanese embassy in Europe ; fight between " Monitor " and " Mer- 
rimac," March 4 ; Defeat of Garibaldi, Augusst 29 ; France declares war 
on Mexico April 16. 

1863. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, January i ; Death of Stone- 
wall Jackson, May 2 ; Battle of Gettysburg, July 3 ; Surrender of Vicks- 
burg, July 4; Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, July 10; Battle of 



TOLD CHRONOLOGICyVLLY. 391 

Chickamauga, September 19; Battle of Chattanooga, November 24; 
Death of Thackeray, December 24. 

1864. Austro-Pnissian army invades Holstein, January 21 ; Russia con- 
quers Circassia ; Death of Meyerbeer, May 2 ; " Alabama " sunk by 
" Kearsage " off Cherbourg, June 19; Repeal of Fugitive Slave Law, 
June 23 ; Treaty of Vienna, end of Schleswig-Holstein war, October 
30 ; Shennan's march to the sea ; Geneva convention for relief of 
wounded in war. 

1865. First direct telegram from India to London, March i ; Death of 
Cobden, April 2 ; Surrender of Lee, April 9 ; Assassination of Lincoln, 
April 14; Andrew Johnson, president of the United States, April 15; 
Paraguay declares war on Argentine Confederation, April 16; Capture 
of Jefferson Davis, May 10; Florence capital of Italy, May 11 ; Salva- 
tion Army created, July 5 ; Death of Palmerston, October 18; Leopold 
IT. king of the Belgians, December 10; Slavery abolished in United 
States, December 18; Death of Fredrica Bremer, December 31. 

1866. Civil Rights bill in United States, April 12 ; Fenian raids into 
Canada, June 8 ; Prussia withdraws from German confederation, June 
14 ; War between Prussia and Austria, June ; Battle of Sadowa, July 3 ; 
Treaty of Prague, August 23 ; Venice united to Italy, November 4 ; 
Rome evacuated by French, December 11. 

1867. Death of Cousin, January 14 ; Schleswig-Holstein absorbed by 
Prussia, January 24 ; Hungary's constitution restored, Februaiy 7 ; 
First ship in Suez Canal, February 17; Alaska purchased by United 
States, March 13 ; French evacuate Mexico, March 16 ; Dominion of 
Canada constituted, March 29 ; Execution of Maximilian, June 19 ; 
Battle of Mentana ; Defeat of Garibaldi, November 3 ; France annexes 
Cochin China ; Modern bicycle invented ; John Pratt patents modern 
typevmter. 

1868. Impeachment of President Johnson, February 25 ; Napier captures 
Magdala, April 13 ; Death of Loi^d Brougham, May 7 ; Insurrection in 
Spain, September 18 ; Flight of Queen Isabella, September 30 ; Death 
of Rossini, November 13 ; Gladstone prime minister of England, 
December 9 ; Mutsuh-ito progressive mikado of Japan. 

1869. Death of Lamartine, February 28 ; Ulysses S. Grant president of 
United States, March 4 ; Great Britain assumes Hudson Bay Territory, 
April 9; Irish Church Disestablishment Act, July 26; Formal opening 
of Suez Canal, November 17 ; Pacific Railway completed. 

1870. Death of Dickens, June 9; Spanish crown offered to Prince Leo- 
pold, July 4 ; Protest of France, July 6 ; Vatican Council declares Infal- 



392 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

libility of the Pope, July i8, France declares war against Prussia, 
July 19; Irish Land Act passed, August i; Battle of Sedan, Septem- 
ber I ; French army surrenders ; Louis Napoleon a prisoner in Germany, 
September 2 ; Republic proclaimed in Paris, September 4 ; Italian 
troops occupy Rome, September 20 ; Rome, capital of Italy, October 9 ; 
Death of Lee, October 13; Communist insurrection in Paris, October 
31 ; Amadeus, son of Victor Emmanuel, king of Spain, November 16; 
Bavaria united to Germany, November 23 ; Death of Dumas, pere, 
December 5 ; German Empire declared, December 10 ; Mount Cenis 
tunnel completed ; Guido Verbeck, educational power in Japan. 

1871. William 1. crowned Emperor of Germany at Versailles, January 18; 
Capitulation of Paris, January 28 ; Thiers " chief of executive," February 
17 ; Germans evacuate Paris, March iS ; Commune proclaimed at Paris 
March 28; Treaty of Versailles, May 10; Death of Herschel, May 11 
Communists burn Paris, May 24 ; Commune overthrown. May 28 
Thiers president of France, August 31 ; Opening of Mt. Cenis tunnel, 
September 17 ; Emancipation in Brazil, September 27 ; Burning of 
Chicago, October 8 ; " Alabama " Arbitration Commission at Geneva, 
December 18; British Columbia joins Dominion of Canada; Japan 
abolishes feudalism. 

1872. Death of Mazzini, March 10 ; Great Britain takes the Gold Coast 
of Africa, April 6 ; Eruption of Vesuvius, April 24 ; Germany expels 
Jesuits, June 19 ; Death of Juarez, July 18 ; English Ballot Act passed, 
July 18 ; First railroad in Japan; University extension in England. 

1873. Death of Napoleon HI., January 9 ; Republic proclaimed in Spain, 
February 1 1 ; Death of Livingstone, May 4 ; Death of John Stuart Mill, 
May 8 ; Macmahon, president of France, May 24 ; Home rule for Egypt, 
June 8 ; Emperor of China receives foreign ministers, June 29; "Ala- 
bama " award paid, September 6 ; Germans evacuate France, Septem- 
ber 16 ; Death of Landseer, October i ; Death of Agassiz, December 15; 

1874. Serrano, dictator of Spain, Jaiiuary 12 ; Wolseley captures Coomas- 
sie, February 4 ; Death of Strauss, February 8 ; Disraeli prime minister 
of England, Febniary 18; Death of Sumner, March 11 ; Death of 
Guizot, September 12; Alphonso king of Spain, December 30; Chau- 
tauqua Educational System organized. 

1875. Prince of Wales visits India, October 11 ; Herzegovina revolts 
against Turkey ; Republican constitution in France, February. 

1876. First railroad in China, June 30 ; Centennial Exhibition, Phila- 
delphia, May 10; Turkish Constitution proclaimed, December 24; Tele 
phone patented, March 7 ; American National Baseball League formed. 



TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY. 393 

1877. Russia invades Turkey, June 27 ; Capture of Plevna, December 10 ; 
Storming of Kars, November 8 ; Death of Thiers, September 4 ; 
Victoria empress of India, January i ; Rutherford B. Hayes president 
of the United States, March 4 ; Rebellion in Japan suppressed, 
September 24 ; Electric lighting in Paris and London. 

1878. Peace of San Stefano, March 3 ; Congress of Berlin, June 13 ; Death 
of Victor Emmanuel, January 9; 'Humbert king of Italy, January 9; 
Death of Pius IX. ; Leo XIIL pope, February 7 ; International Exhibi- 
tion at Paris; British occupy Cyprus, July 13; Franchise in Japan; 
Edison invents phonograph. 

1879. Grevy president of France, January 30 ; Death of Prince Louis 
Napoleon in South Africa, June i ; Zulu War ; Irish Land League advo- 
cated by Parnell ; Resumption of specie payment in United States, 
January i. 

1880. Conference of Berlin, June 16 ; Gladstone prime minister of Eng- 
land, AprU 28 ; Modern Athletics (amateur and professional) become 
established. 

s88i. Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor formed, February 2. 
Assassination of Alexander I., czar of Russia ; Alexander II. czar, 
. March 13 ; Electoral Suffrage in Italy, Januaiy 21 ; Milan king of 
Servia, March 6 ; Opening of St. Gothard Railway, March 22 ; Death of 
Garibaldi, June 2; Gambetta minister of France, November 13; Irish 
Land Act, August 22 ; James A. Garfield, president of United States, 
March 4 ; Assassination of Garfield, July 2 ; Chester A. Arthur presi- 
dent of United States, September 19, 

1882. French expansion in Africa and Asia; Death of Gambetta, Decem- 
ber 31 ; Phoenix Park assassination (Dublin), May 6 ; Bombardment of 
Alexandria, July 11 ; Battle of Tel-el-keber, September; Irish Coercion 
Act, July 14 ; Chinese excluded from United States, May 6 ; New Con- 
stitution for Japan, October. 

1883. Death of Peter Cooper, April 4 ; Brooklyn Bridge opened. May 24 ; 
German national monument unveiled, September 28 ; Australian colonies 
declare for union, December 8. 

1884. Socialists banished from Vienna, January 31 ; Arbitration board for 
labor disputes established in America, May 23 ; Electric exhibition in 
Philadelphia, September 2 ; Porfirio Diaz president of Mexico, De- 
cember I. 

1885. Death of " Chinese " Gordon at Khartoum, January 27 ; Grover 
Cleveland president of United States, March 4 ; King of the Belgians 
sovereign of the Congo State, April 21 ; Reunion of Union and Con- 



394 'i'HE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

federate veterans at. Gettysburg, May 4 ; Surrender of Canadian insur- 
gent leader, Riel, May 14; Death of Victor Hugo, May 22; Death of 
U. S. Grant, July 23. 
i886. Great Britain annexes Burmali, January i ; Gladstone prime minis- 
ter of England, February 3 ; Anarchist riots in Chicago, May 4 ; 
Trouble between Greece and Turkey, May ; Ludwig of Bavaria com- 
mits suicide, June 13; Cuban autonomy refused by Spain, June 30; 
Gladstone resigns, July 21 ; Statue of Liberty in New York harbor 
unveiled, October 27. 

1887. Interstate Commerce Bill (U. S.), January 21 ; Queen Victoria's 
Jubilee, June 21 ; Mormons give up polygamy, July 7 ; Beginning of 
new U. S. navy, August 15; Sadi-Carnot president of France, Decem- 
ber 3 ; Independence of Corea, December 21. 

1888. Death of Wilham I., emperor of Germany, March 9 ; Frederic III. 
emperor of Germany, March 9 ; Railroad opened in Central Asia, May 
27; Death of Frederick III., emperor of Germany; William II. suc- 
ceeds, June 15 ; Death of General Sheridan, August 12; Chinese Ex- 
clusion Bill signed, October i. 

1889. Troubles in Samoa, January; Benjamin Harrison president of the 
United States, March 4 ; Death of Ericsson, March 9 ; Death of John 
Bright, March 27 ; American and German war-ships destroyed by hurri- 
cane in Samoa, March 15; Centennial celebration of Washington's 
inauguration at New York, April 30 ; International exhibition at Paris, 
May 6; Exile of Boulanger, August 15; Pan-American Congress at 
Washington, October i; Brazil a republic, November 15; Charles I. 
king of Portugal, December 28. 

1890. Labor troubles in Germany, February ; Firth of Forth bridge opened, 
March 4 ; Resignation of Bismarck, March 17 ; Australian ballot system 
introduced into America, April 2 ; Federation of Women's clubs formed, 
April 23 ; Austria refuses citizenship to Kossuth, May 30 ; European 
powers combine to suppress anarchy, June 3 ; Revolutions and wars in 
Central and South America, July ; Statue of Daguerre unveiled at 
Washington, August 15 ; Financial panic in London, November 15. 

1891. Germany takes possession of African territory, January i ; Revo- 
lution in Chili, Januaiy 7 ; Death of Bancroft, January 1 7 ; Death of 
General Sherman, Febniaiy 14; Fonseca president of Brazil, Februaiy 
25; Telephone between London and Paris, March 17; Death of von 
Moltke. April 24 ; Death of Sir John Macdonald, June 6 ; Trial of 
smokeless powder, July 25; Death of Lowell, August 12; Death of 
Parnell, October 6, 



TOLD CHRONOLOGICALLY. 395 

1892. Behring Sea arbitration treaty, February 29 ; Death of Walt Whit- 
man, March 26 ; Gladstone prime minister of England, August 1 1 ; 
Centennial celebration of first French Republic, September 22 ; Death 
of Tennyson, October 6 ; Death of Whittier, September 7. 

1893. Insurrection in Mexico, January i ; Labor riots in Holland, January 
2; Revolution in Hawaii, January 16; Grover Cleveland president of 
United States, March 4 ; World's Fair opens in Chicago, May i ; Eight- 
hour working day meetings in England, May 7 ; French in Siam, July ; 
Death of Tyndall, December 4. 

1894. French troops in the Soudan, January 25 ; International Sanitary 
Conference at Paris, Febniary 7 ; Gladstone resigns and declines a peer- 
age, March 2 ; Insurrection and arbitration in South America, February, 
March ; " Industrial armies " in United States, April ; Opening of Man- 
chester ship-canal. May 21 ; Strikes in Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, 
June; Assassination of President Carnot of France, June 24; Casimir- 
Perier president of France, June 27 ; Japan declares war against China, 
August i; Battle of Yulu River, September 16; Liberal movement 
against English House of Lords, October 27 ; Death of Alexander II. 
of Russia, November i ; Nicholas II. czar of Russia, November 2 ; 
Nicaragua Canal Company incorporated, November 25. 

1895. Degradation of Dreyfus, January 5 ; Bread-riot in Newfoundland, 
January 8; Felix Faure president of France, January 17; Japanese 
capture Wei-Hai-Wei. January 31 ; Revolution in Cuba, February 24 ; 
Treaty of peace between China and Japan, April 16; Standard Oil 
Company indicted as a Trust, April 27 ; Opening of Harlem ship-canal, 
June 17; World's Women's Christian Temperance Union meets at 
London, June 19; Death of Huxley, June 29; French victorious in 
Madagascar, July 3; Cuba declares her independence, July 15; Li- 
Hung-Chang chancellor of China, August 30 ; Massacres in Armenia. 
October; President Cleveland's Venezuela message, December 17. 

1895, Jameson's raid into Transvaal, January i ; Jameson surrenders to 
Boers, Januaiy 2 ; Roentgen discovers X-rays, January 5 ; President 
prohibits prize-fighting in United States territory, February 7 ; Anglo- 
American meetings in London in favor of, arbitration, March 3 ; Aus- 
tralia declares for federation, March 5 ; Olympic games at Athens, April 
6 ; Shah of Persia assassinated. May i ; National millennium celebrated 
at Buda-Pesth, May 2 ; Civil service in United States, May 6 ; Mada- 
gascar a French colony, June 20; Irish Land Bill passed, August 
13; Philippine Islands revolt against Spain, August 31; International 
Women's Congress at Berlin, September 19 ; Victoria's reign now long- 



396 THE STORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

est in England's history, September 23 ; Opening of Danube Canal, 
September 27 ; England's acceptance of Monroe Doctrine, November 9 ; 
Death of Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

1897. Anglo-American arbitration treaty signed at Washington, January 
1 1 ; Venezuela treaty signed, February 2 ; William McKinley president 
of United States, March 4 ; Sultan of Zanzibar abolishes slavery, April 
6; War betvsreen Turkey and Greece, April 17; Arbitration treaty re- 
jected by United States, May 17; Andree's balloon search for North 
Pole, July 1 1 ; Klondike gold craze, July 1 7 ; Treaty of peace between 
Turkey and Greece, December 4 ; Sealing-treaty between United States, 
Japan, and Russia, November 6. 

1898. United States battleship Maine destroyed in Havana, February 15 ; 
United States demand the surrender of Cuba from Spain, April 20 ; 
War between United States and Spain, April 21 ; Battle of Manila Bay, 
May I ; Death of Gladstone, May 19; Destruction of Spanish fleet at 
Santiago, July 3; Surrender of Santiago, July 14; Americans capture 
Porto Rico, July 28; United States annexed Hawaii, August 12 ; Sur- 
render of Manila, August 13; Czar of Russia proposes International 
Peace Conference, August 27 ; English victory at Omdurman, Egypt, , 
September 2 ; Capture of Khartoum, September 4 ; Wilhelmina queen 
of Holland, September 4; French at Fashoda, September 10; English 
occupy Fashoda, September 20 ; Dreyfus case reopened, September 27 ; 
Bones of Columbus carried to Spain, September 27 ; United States 
demands the Philippines, October 31 ; Turks expelled from Crete, 
November 7 ; Treaty of Paris, between Spain and United States, Decem- 
mber 10; Friction between Boers and Outlanders, December 29; Anglo- 
American League, July 1 3 ; Death of Bismarck. 

1899. Death of President Faure, Febraary 16 ; fimile Loubet president of 
France, February 18; Samoans attack American and British sailors, 
April I ; Banishment of Roger Williams (1635) i^evoked by Massachu- 
setts legislature, April 18; Cromwell's three hundredth anniversary cele- 
brated in England, April 25 ; Rebellion of Aguinaldo in Philippines, 
February 4 ; International Peace Conference at the Hague, May 18; 
Dreyfus declared guilty, September 9; pardoned, September 19; War 
between England and the Dutch republics, October 10; England relin- 
quishes claims in Samoa, November 8 ; Samoan partition treaty signed, 
December 2 ; Aguinaldo's Philippine revolt overthrown, November 24 ; 
Philippine ports opened to commerce, December 11. 



INDEX. 



Abd-el-Kader, defeats French, 182. 

Abercrombie, Dr., discovery in med- 
icine, 127. 

Abolition of slavery, English, 143. 

Aboukir, victory of, 37. 

Adams, John, 44 ; death of, 1 28. 

Adams, John Quincy ; declines An- 
glo-American alliance, 105 ; joint 
author of Monroe Doctrine, 107 ; 
advocates Pan-American Con- 
gress, 129 ; defeat of, 130. 

Adrianople, peace of, 125. 

Afghanistan in 1800, 19. 

Africa in 1 800, 20 ; little known in 
1825, 112; commercial value rec- 
ognized, 113; explorers in, 290 ; 
" scramble for," 332. 

Afrikander Bund, the, 332. 

Alaska in 1800, 22. 

Albuera, battle of, 67. 

Alexander II., czar, accession of, 
221 ; emancipates serfs, 256. 

Alfieri, 27. 

Alfonso XII., king of Spain, 305. 

Algiers, dey of, 43. 

Alma, battle of, 218. 

Alsace and Lorraine lost by France, 
283. 

American Fur Company, 119. 

Amiens, treaty of, 31. 

Anaesthetics, value of, 196. 

Anarchists in Austria, 323. 

Anderson, Major Robert, 248. 

Andes, San Martin crosses, 89. 

Angamos Point, battle of, 322. 

Anglo-American Alliance suggested 
in 1823, 105. 

Anglo-Saxon influence and union. 



Angostura, battle of. 



Apia, hurricane at, 337. 

Appomattox, surrender at, 261, 

Arabi Pasha, revolt of, 318. 

Arctic explorations in 1825, 118 ; in 
1850, 208 ; later discoveries, 290. 

Armenian revolt of 1896, 365. 

Arndt rouses Germany, 73 ; song to 
Bliicher, 75 ; persecuted, 121. 

Asia attracts European nations, 113. 

Asia Minor in 1800, 19. 

Aspern, battle of, 55. 

Astor, John Jacob, founds Astoria, 
119. 

Astronomy in 1830, 149. 

Art in Nineteenth Century, 349. 

Atlantic cable, first despatch, 231. 

Atomic theory, 18. 

Auerstadt, battle of, 48. 

Austerlitz, battle of, 48 ; " Sun of," 
48 ; results of, 48. 

Australia in 1800, 23 ; in 1825, 113. 

Australian farmers object to aboli- 
tion of slavery, 143. 

Australasia in 1800, 23 ; federation 
desired, 320. 

Austria in coalition, 20, 39, 43 ; Na- 
poleon quarrels with, 54 ; defeat 
of, 56 ; wins coahtion of 18 13, 74 ; 
troubles of, in 1848, 191 ; seeks 
help of Russia, 191 ; war with Ger- 
many, 267 ; grants Hungary re- 
forms, 270 ; electoral reform in, 

305- 
Austro-Prussian war of 1866, 266. 
Ayacucho, battle of, 104. 

Bainbridge, Com., 43. 
Balaclava, battle of, 218. 
Ballooning, 17. 
Ballou, Hosea, position of, 194. 



397 



398 



INDEX. 



Baltimore and Ohio Railway begun, 
138. 

Balzac on Napoleon, 102 ; on revo- 
lutions, 158; on North America, 
160 ; on American liberty, 175. 

Barbary pirates, 42. 

" Battle of the Nations." See Leip- 
sic. 

Bautzen, battle of, 73. 

Baylen, battle of, 53. 

Beechey, Captain, in the Arctic, 119. 

Behring Sea arbitration, 357. 

Belgium under French control, 20 ; 
revolt in, 136; independence rec- 
ognized, 137 ; universal suffrage 
in, 357- 

Beranger, songs of, 133 ; on change 
of governments, 136. 

Berlin, capture of, 48 ; congress at, 
285 ; conference of 1877 in, 307 ; 
in 1889, 337. 

Berzsenyi, hated by Austria for 
liberalism, 122. 

Bessemer process of steel, 231. 

Bethlehem, key of church at, 216, 
222. 

Beust, Baron, liberal Austrian min- 
ister, 270. 

Bismarck becomes chancellor, 266 ; 
head of North German confed- 
eration, 267 ; snubs Louis Napo- 
leon, 268 ; defeats Napoleon's 
schemes, 280 ; effective war meas- 
ures of, 281 ; forces demands at 
Peace of Versailles, 283 ; creator 
of German unity, 254 ; typical of 
his age, 296 ; wins " Culturkampf," 
296 ; socialism, 298 ; achievements 
of, 308 ; methods of, 317 ; unpopu- 
larity of, 322 ; paternal rule of, 326 ; 
revolt against, 327 ; dismissal of, 
331, 350 ; in Samoan affairs, 337. 

Bjornson, Norwegian reformer, 322 ; 
patriotism of, 356. 

Black Hawk, the Sac, 155. 

Blaine, James G., plans Pan-Amer- 
ican Congress, 338. 

Bliicher, field-marshal, 75. 

Boers of Africa, 40 ; object to abo- 
lition of slavery, 143 ; in Trans- 
vaal, 289 ; native protest against, 



308 ; proclaims South African 
Republic, 318 ; war with England, 

371- 

Bolivar, Simon, " the Liberator," 
oath on Mount Aventine, 88 ; cap- 
cuies Caracas, 89 ; in Peru, 103 ; 
meets San Martin, 103 ; proposes 
Pan-Ameiican Congress, 129 ; 
death of, 129. 

Bonaparte. See Napoleon. 

Booth, of Salvation Army, 325. 

Borodino, battle of, 70. 

Botany in 1830, 149 

Boulanger, rise and fall of, 330. 

Boulogne, fleet at, 37 ; Louis Napo- 
leon at, 169. 

Bourbons, return of, 76. 

Boyaca, battle of, 89. 

Boycotting, 321. 

Bozzaris, Marco, sortie of, iii. 

Bramah, Joseph, safety lock, 16. 

Brazil, independence of, 103 ; condi- 
tion in 1870, 288 ; becomes repub- 
lic, 335- 

Brest, victory at, 37. 

Bright, John, sides with United 
States in CivU War, 251, 257; 
" tribune of the people," 269 ; ad- 
vocates " justice to Ireland," 320. 

Blight, Richard, discoveries in med- 
icine, 127. 

Broussais, researches in medicine, 
127. 

Brunei, Marc, ship-building machin- 
ery, 17. 

Brown, Jessie, at Lucknow, 233. 

Brown, John, executed for insurrec- 
tion, 232. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, on Na- 
poleon III., 207 ; on entry into 
Milan, 224 ; on death of Cavour, 
242 ; on American " curse," 245 ; 
death of, 242. 

Bryant, William Cullen, 27 ; pub- 
lishes " Thanatopsis," 99. 

Buffaloes, hunting of, for robes, 120. 

Burns, Robert, 26. 

Byron, Lord, 26 ; on Napoleon, 77 ; 
publishes " Childe Harold," 84 ; 
in Greek war of independence, 
108 ; death of, no. 



INDEX. 



399 



Cable, Atlantic, successfully laid, 
271. 

Calcutta, National Congress at, 356. 

Calhoun, champion of slavery, 184. 

California, gold discovered in, 201 ; 
admitted to Union, 202. 

Canada, union of, 175 ; wise colonial 
government of, 286 ; proclaimed 
Dominion, 272 ; Kiel's rebellion, 
273 ; federation of, 273 ; almost a 
democracy, 358. 

Canning in power, 124. 

Cape Colony, condition of, in 1870, 
289. 

Caracas, capture of, 89. 

Carbonari in Italy, 87 ; revolt of, 
108. 

Carlyle, Thomas, influence of, 194 ; 
" French Revolution " of, 150 ; in- 
fluence of; 293. 

Carpenisi, battle of, iii. 

Caroline, Queen, troubles of, 123. 

Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, 13S. 

Castelar, Emilio, leads Spanish re- 
publicans, 269 ; desires of, 305. 

Cavour, Count di, rise of, 193 ; in 
Victor Emmanuel's cabinet, 205 ; 
appearance of, 219; Crimean tri- 
umph of, 220 ; appeals to France, 
222, 223; move against Austria, 
223 ; president of council, 234 ; 
pledges territory, 240 ; success of, 

241 ; death of, 242 ; influence of, 

242 ; true prophet, 279. 
Cawnpore, massacre at, 233. 
Centennial Exhibition of 1876, 301. 
Central America, United States of, 

374- 
Cervera, fatal dash of, 371. 
Channing, William Ellery, position 

of, 194. 
Chappe, Claude, telegraphy, 17. 
Chapultepec, and Molino del Rey, 

Mexican holidays, 183. 
" Charcoal-burners " of the Abruzzi. 

See Carbonari. 
" Charge of the Light Brigade," 218. 
Charles, Archduke, 55. 
Charles X. of France, 135 ; deposed, 

136. 
Chartists, the, 150. 



Chassagne, photograph in colors, 
376. 

Chauteaubriand, influence of, loi. 

Chicago, World's Fair at, in 1893, 
352 ; marvellous growth of, 353. 

Chili, war with Peru and Bolivia, 
322. 

China in 1800, 18 ; England's foot- 
ing in, 170; opened to outside 
commerce, 209 ; rebellion in, 210 ; 
war with Japan, 358, 365. 

Chloroform, discovery of, 196. 

Christianity, world's convention of, 

193- 

" Citizen King," the. See Louis 
Philippe. 

Ciudad Rodrigo, battle of, 67. 

Clay, Henry, and Missouri Com- 
promise, 145 ; Compromise of 
1850, 185 ; death of, 211, 212. 

Clinton, De Witt, opens Erie canal, 
116. 

Clive in India, 23. 

Cobbett, William, reformer, 91. 

Cobden, Richard, influence of, 172. 

Colombia, republic of, declared, 89 

Colonial possessions of European 
states, 202. 

Colonial possessions of world in 
1900, 379. 

Cotton-gin, 18. 

Comenius, 25. 

Commercial league organized in 
Prussia, 138. 

Commune desolates Paris, 283 ; 
overthrown, 283. 

Communists in France, 323. 

Compromise of 1850, 185, 212. 

Confederation of the Rhine, 48. 

Conference, Universal Peace, 367, 

374- 
Congress of Kings. See Dresden. 
" Continental System " of Napoleon, 

57- 
Cooper, J. Fenimore, 27 ; publishes 

" The Spy," 99. 
Cooper, Peter, philanthropy of, 325 
Corunna, battle of, 53. 
Crimean War, 218. 
Crispi, Italian prime minister, defeat 

of, 330- 



400 



INDEX. 



Cronje, heroic stand of, 371. 

Crystal palace of 1851, 215. 

Cuba, slavery abolished in, 320; rev- 
olution in, 365 ; aided by United 
States, 369 ; liberation of, 366. 

" Culturkampf " the. See Bismarck. 

Czar of Russia head of Holy Al- 
liance,i04 ; emancipate sserfs, 256. 

Daguerre discovers daguerreotype, 
178. 

Dale, 43. 

Dalton, John, atomic theory, 17. 

Darwin, investigations of, 292. 

Davis, Jefferson, inaugurated, 244. 

Davy, Sir Humphry, against gas- 
lighting, 94. 

Deak, Francis, recognized by Aus- 
tria, 270. 

Decatur, 43. 

" Decrees of 1807," 49. 

Delhi, siege of, 233. 

Disraeli, policy as prime minister, 
299. 

Draper, Professor, makes photo- 
graphic picture, 178. 

Dresden, congress at, in 181 1, 68. 

Democracy, " arrival of," 382. 

Denmark, defeat of, in 1864, 255. 

Denmark under French control, 20. 

Derzhavin, 27. 

Dewey, Adm., at Manila, 370. 

Diaz, Porfirio, ability of, 288. 

Dickens, "Pickwick Papers," 150. 

Dreyfus case, the, 374. 

Dom Pedro II., of Brazil, wisdom 
of, 284 ; exile of, 334. 

Dost Mohammed, 154. 

Dutch in Africa, 40. 

Eastern Question, the, 166. 
Education in 1800, 25. 
Egypt against Turkey, 167. 
Edison, Thomas Alva, age of, 346, 

375- 

Elba, island of, 76 ; Napoleon es- 
capes from, 77. 

Electricity, development of, 375. 

" Embargo Act," 50. 

Emancipation Proclamation. See 
Lincoln. 



Emerson, Ralph .Waldo, influence 
of, 194, 293. 

Emmett, Robert, 41. 

Engineering projects in 1899, 375. 

England in North America, 22 ; in 
Asia in iSoo, 23; opposition to 
Napoleon, 33, 35, 41 ; in 1805, 
45; against Europe, 49 ; literature 
in 1820, 99 ; suggests alliance 
with U. S., 105; recognizes Mon- 
roe doctrine, 107 ; first railway in, 
116; reforms demanded in, 122 ; 
influence of French revolution on, 
122; takes Hong Kong, 180; af- 
fairs in 1840, 171 ; foreign pos- 
sessions of, 202 ; in China, 209 ; 
joins France in Crimean war, 217 ; 
literature in i860, 230, 234 ; quells 
Sepoy mutiny, 233 ; position 
toward U. S. in civil war, 251 ; 
friendly with, 257 ; workingmen 
of, favor U. S., 258; reforms of 
1870, 273; in Asia, 318; Victo- 
rian Jubilee in, 329 ; imperial fed- 
eration of, 331 ; war with Boers, 
371 ; vastness of colonial posses- 
sions, 380. 

English people defend Queen Caro- 
line, 123. 

English-speaking world, 38 1 . 

" Era of Good Feeling," U. S., 93. 

Erfurt, Goethe and Napoleon at, 84. 

Erie Canal opened, 116. 

Esseling, battle of, 55. 

Ether, discovery of, 196. 

Ethics in 1830, 149. 

Ethnology in 1830, 149. 

Europe at war in 1800, 24 ; in 1805, 
47 ; in 1806, 48 ; on the defensive 
in 1 810, 58; revolution of 1830, 
137; in 1840, 172; upheaval in 
1848, 188; discontent in, 323. 

Exhibition, International, of 1851,215. 

Expansion in 1830, 154. 

Eylau, battle of, 48. 

Finland " Russified," 339. 
Ferdinand of Austria, flight of, 188 ; 

abdication of, 191. 
Florida sold by Spain to United 

States, 90. 



INDEX. 



401 



" Forces of France." See National 
Guard. 

France in North America, 21; co- 
lonial defeats, 69 ; invasion of, 
76 ; becomes constitutional mon- 
archy, 136 ; abolishes hereditary 
peerage, 137 ; early railroads in, 
139; excluded from European 
councils, 167, 170; revolution of 
1848, 187; literature in, 230 ; peo- 
ple friendly to U. S., 251 ; declares 
war against Gennany, 280; in 
war with Gennany, 281 ; defeated 
by Germany, 282 ; colonial ad- 
vance of, 322 ; communism in, 

323- 
Francke, Hermann, 25. 
Francis Joseph, accession of, 191 ; 

at Villa Franca, 225. 
Franklin, Benjamin, prophecy of,i6 ; 

experiments of, 18. 
Franklin, Sir John, in the Arctic, 

119 ; loss of, 208. 
Friedland, battle of, 48. 
Froebel, founds his kindergarten 

system, 127. 
Freiligrath, Friedrich, love of father- 
land, 134. 
Frederick the Great, prediction of, 

301 ; disproved, 303. 
Frederick III. of Gennany, death 

of, 327. 
Fulton, Robert, 61. 
Fugitive Slave Law, 185, 213. 

Galvani, Luigi, galvanism, 17. 

Gambetta, methods of, 317; leader 
in France, 322 ; defeat of, 330. 

Garibaldi, revolt of, 226 ; enters 
Palermo, 239, 240 ; character of, 
239 ; revolts in Southern Italy, 
240 ; dictator of Sicily, 240 ; in- 
vades Roman territory ; defeated, 
279. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, favors se- 
cession, 246. 

Gas in use, 17. 

Geneva Cross, the, 360. 

Geneva, Labor Congress at, 274. 

Geography in 1S30, 149. 

Geology in 1830, 149. 



George III., obstinacy of, 34 ; death 
of, 92. 

George IV., regent and king, 92 ; 
persecutes Queen Caroline, 123. 

George, Henry, efforts of, 319; 
land-relief plans, 320. 

Germany in 1805, 41 ; humiliation 
of, 57 ; literature in 1820, 100 ; 
condition in 1825, 120; literature 
in i860, 230; growth of, 266; 
Bismarck chancellor of, 266 ; war 
with Austria, 267 ; growing power 
of, 280; war with France, 281; 
defeats France, 282 ; " bulwark of 
peace," 285 ; socialism in, 297 ; na- 
tional monument erected by, 309 ; 
paternal government of, 327 ; re- 
volt against Bismarck, 327. 

Gettysburg, battle of, 249 ; Lincoln 
at, 259. 

Goethe in 1800,26; in 1805 84; 
completes "Faust," 120. 

Gold in California, 201 ; developed 
in South Africa, 339. 

" Good roads," 61. 

Gordon, General, abandonment of, 

319- 

Gorgei, Hungarian general, 191 ; 
surrender of, 192. 

Gladstone, W. E., sides with South- 
ern Confederacy, 251 ; prime min- 
ister, 273 ; influence of, 285 ; 
defeated, 29S ; methods of, 316; 
foreign policy of, 318; criticized, 
319; concession to Ireland, 319; 
defeat of, 330 ; premier for fourth 
time, 356 ; on Woman's Siiffrage, 
361. 

" Grand Old Man," the. See Glad- 
stone. 

Grant, Ulysses S., 249 ; defeats 
Lee, 261 ; president U. S., 295. 

Great Britain and Ireland, United 
Kingdom of, 33 ; parliament of, 
138. 

Great Eastern launched, 232. 

Greece, powers interfere in behalf 
of, 125 ; independence declared, 
125 ; war with Turkey, 366. 

Greeley, Horace, favors secession, 
246. 



402 



INDEX. 



Greeii, on Washington, 15. 

Grimm, the brothers, banished for 

liberalism, 121. 
Guayaquil, " liberators " meet at, 

103. 
Guizot founds popular educational 

system, 138; prime minister, 171. 

Hague, Peace Conference of 1899 
at, 367. 

Hahnemann founds homoeopathy 
127. 

Hall, Newman, prayer for the Union 
cause in United States, 251. 

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 27 ; on Marco 
Bozzaiis, III. 

Havelock, march of, 233. 

Hawaii becomes constitutional mon- 
archy, 336 ; annexed, 370. 

Heber, Reginald, missionary hymn, 
118. 

Heine, the satirist, 134; influence 
of, 158. 

Herschel, William, telescopes, 17. 

Herzegovina, revolt of, 306 ; appeal 
to Europe, 308. 

Higher education, 360. 

Hill, John, originator of postal ser- 
vice, 179. 

Hill, Sir Rowland, inaugurates pen- 
ny-postage, 179. 

History, in 1830, 149. 

Hofer, Andreas, 56. 

Holland under French control, 20, 

39- 

Holy Alliance formed, 104 ; warned 
by United States, 107 ; interferes 
in Europe, 108 ; arouses Byron. 
108; fears Greek success, iii; 
puts down revolt, 137 ; Cannning 
defies, 124. 

" Holy Roman Empire " abolished, 
40. 

Homoeopathy. See Hahnemann. 

Hong Kong, England assumes pos- 
session of, 170 ; occupied by Eng- 
land, 209. 

Horse railroad, first, 138. 

Howells on Tolstoi, 315. 

Hudson's Bay Company, 119. 

Hugo, Victor, on Napoleon, 82 ; 



" Hernani," 133; on Napoleon 

III., 207. 
Humboldt, Alex, von, self -banished 

for liberalism, 122. 
Hungary desires independence, 116; 

revolution in, 188 ; condition in, 

190; declares its independence, 

192. 
Hung-sew'tseuen, leader of Tai-ping 

rebellion, 210. 

Ibrahim Pacha in Greece, no; 
retreats, 125; unsuccess, 155. 

Improvements in 1810,61. 

India in 1800, 19 ; first telegram 
from, 271. 

Indians, American, in 1800, 21. 

Inkerman, battle of, 218. 

International Association of Labor- 
ers, 274. 

Inventions, progress of, in 1850, 195. 

Ireland, union with " United King- 
dom, 33 ; in 1879, 3°o 5 '^"^d 
league in, 301 ; concessions to, 
319 ; " justice," 320. 

Irving, Washington, 27 ; publishes 
" Sketch-Book," 99. 

Isabella of Spain, flight of, 269 ; 
son of, king, 305. 

Italy under French control, 20, 40. 

Iturbide, revolts against Spain, 90. 

Jackson, Andrew, hatred of Eng- 
land, 69 ; conqueror of Florida, 
93 ; president United States, 130 ; 

- the "Age" of, 133; "makes his 
mark," 151 ; influence of, 153, 159. 

Jameson's raid, 371. 

Japan in 1800, 19; treaty with 
United States, 211; sends em- 
bassy abroad, 256; advance in, 
304 ; constitutional monarchy, 
335 ; development of, 358 ; war 
with China, 359. 

Jefferson, Thomas, purchase of 
Louisiana, 36 ; in 1805, 41 ; pro- 
claims embargo, 50; dislike of 
England, 79 ; suggests " Monroe 
Doctrine," 107 ; death of, 128. 

Jena, battle of, 48 ; University of, 85. 

Jenner, Edward, vaccination, 17. 



INDEX. 



40: 



Jews, treatment of, by Napoleon, 62; 

English parliament open to, 235. 
Johnson, Samuel, 26. 
Johnson, Andrew, impeachment of, 

263. 
Joseph, king of Spain, objects to 

Napoleon's methods, 66. 

Karamzen, 27. 

Kansas-Nebraska trouble, 228. 

Katkoff, Russian nationalist, 328. 

Kandahar, relief of, 319. 

Kean, 85. 

Kemble, 84. 

Khame, Zulu chief, appeal of, 308. 

Kipling, on " Flag of England," 380. 

Kidd, Benjamin, on changing order 

of the century, 364. 
Klondike, gold in, 377. 
Koch, discovers consumption cure, 

359- 

Kossuth, Louis, the liberator, 165 ; 
impulsiveness of, 173; demands 
independence, 174 ; boycotts Aus- 
tria, 185 ; rouses Hungary to rev- 
olution, 188 ; leader of people, 
190 ; governor, 192 ; defeat of, 193. 

Korea causes war in East, 358. 

Korner, " Sword Song," 74 ; arouses 
Germany, 85. 

Kriloff, 27. 

Kruger, Paul, influence of, 371. 

Labor-saving machinery, 140. 
Labor troubles, 355. 
Laenec, researches in medicine, 127. 
Lafayette commands National 

Guard, 135 ; refuses crown of 

France, 136. 
Lampedusa, island. United States 

desires, 203. 
" Land Grab," the Turkish, 307. 
Land League. See Ireland. 
Land Nationalism. See Henry 

George. 
Laplace, astronomer, 17. 
" League of Peace," the, 351. 
League of the Four Kings, 204 ; 

League of the Three Kings, 204. 
Lee, Robert E., 249 ; defeat of, 261 ; 

on Southern loyalty, 261. 



Leipsic, battle of, 74. 

Leopold of Hohenzollern offered 
crown of Spain, 270. 

Lincoln, Abraham, elected, 229 ; 
nominated, 239 ; character of, 
239, 243 ; election of, 243 ; obscu- 
rity of, 243 ; pleas for Union, 
245; on Slavery, 247 ; conserva- 
tion of, 249 ; issues Emancipa- 
tion proclamation, 250 ; to Eng- 
lish workingmen, 258 ; speech 
at Gettysburg, 259 ; re-elected, 
260 ; asassination of, 262 ; char- 
acter of, 263 ; age of, 275. 

Liberia, republic of, ^23- 

Literature in 1800, 26 ; in i860, 
229, 234 ; in 1890, 347. 

Lithogi^aphy, 17. 

Liquid air discovered, 376. 

Livingstone, Dr. David, explora- 
tions in Africa, 208, 232 ; " dis- 
covers " Africa, 289. 

Livesey, Joseph, first " teetotaler," 
147. 

Locke, John, 25. 

Locomotives in America, 138. 

Lombardy annexed to Sardinia, 224. 

London, Conference of, 125. 

London Times on America in sci- 
ence, 304. 

Louise of Prussia, Queen, avenged, 
282. 

Louisiana, sale of, by Napoleon, 36, 

45- 
Louis, Napoleon, at Boulogne, 169 ; 
imprisoned, 170 : escape of, 185 ; 
in France, elected to National As- 
sembly, 189 ; president of French 
republic, 190 ; ambitions of, 205 ; 
coup d ^etat of, 206 ; emperor, 206 ; 
brings about Crimean war, 216; 
unites with England against Rus- 
sia, 217 ; helps Cavour, 222 ; joins 
Italy against Austria, 22 ; de- 
clares war against Austria, 224 ; 
serts Italy, 225 ; hostility of toward 
America, 246 ; unfriendly to the 
Union, 251 ; desires to found 
Latin kingdom in America, 252 ; 
invades Mexico, 254 ; conquers 
Mexico, and makes Maximilian 



404 



INDEX. 



emperor, 254 ; in European af- 
fairs, 254 ; warned, 264 ; evacuates 
Mexico, 265 ; schemes in Europe, 
265 ; height of power, 266 ; 
" Sphinx of the Tuileries," 265 ; in 
Austro-Pnissian war, 268 ; angered 
over German " influence " in 
Spain, 270 ; seeks war with Ger- 
many, 270 ; refuses Rome to Italy, 
279 ; schemes of, 280 ; protests 
against German king for Spain, 
280 ; proclaims war against Ger- 
many, 280 ; defeat and surrender 
of, 281. 

Louis Philippe, king of France, 136, 
165 ; gives Egypt no support, 167 ; 
asks England for " ashes of Na- 
poleon," 167 ; unpopularity of, 
170 ; abdication of, 187. 

Lowell, James Russell, on progress, 
196 ; on Villa Franca, 227. 

Lucknow, relief of, 233. 

Luneville, peace of, 31. 

Ltitzen, battle of, 73. 

Lyceujn of the Czar, 86. 

Macadam, 61. 

McClure, Robert, Arctic explora- 
tions of, 208. 

Mackenzie, Robert, on Napoleon, 
82 ; on Charles X., 135. 

Madison in War of 181 2, 77. 

Madrid, capture of, 53. 

Magenta, battle of, 224. 

" Maine," destruction of the, 369. 

Maipo, battle of the, 90. 

Majuba Hill, battle of, 318. 

Malakoff, the, at Sebastopol, 220 ; 
fall of, 221. 

Malta, cause of war, 38. 

" Man with the hoe " in 1825, 120. 

Manchester, massacre at, 92. 

Mann, Horace, fights for education, 
127 ; influence of, 161. 

Manzoni, pleas of, 133. 

Marengo, battle of, 31. 

Marx, Karl, socialist, 274. 

Mathew, Father, temperance cru- 
sade of, 148. 

Maximilian made emperor of Mexico, 
254 ; defeated and executed, 265. 



Mazzini supports Garibaldi, 240. 

Mechanical successes in 1830, 149. 

Mehemet Ali, rise of, 32 ; in Greece, 
no; revolts against Turkey, 166. 

Menlo Park, " Wizard of." See Edi- 
son. 

Mentana, battle of, 279. 

Metternich, diplomacy of, 157; meth- 
ods of, 173 ; flight of, 188. 

Mexico, last heretic burned in, 112 ; 
war with United States, 182 ; in- 
fluence of war on, 183 ; in 1861, 
252 ; trouble with European cred- 
itors, 252 ; invaded by allies, 253 ; 
war with France, 254 ; America 
supports, 264 ; French evacuate, 
265 ; defeats and executes Max- 
imilian, 265 ; prosperity in, 288. 

Mickiewicz seeks to arouse interest 
in Poland, 174. 

Midhat Pasha, grand vizier, 306 ; 
abandoned, 307. 

Milan, Victor Emmanuel enters, 224. 

Militarism holds people in check, 
1820, 103. 

MiU, John Stuart, essay " On Lib- 
erty," 239 ; character of, 239. 

Millet, Jean Francois, at Barbazon, 
120. 

Minto, Prof., on Byron, 108. 

Miranda, " knight-errant of liberty," 
88. 

Missionary movement in 1825, 117 ; 
character, 208. 

Missolonghi, Byron dies at, no; 
siege of, no ; Marco Bozzaris at, 
III. 

Missouri, admission of, 93, 145. 

Mohl, Madam, on Napoleon III.,222. 

Monroe, James, president, 93, 105 ; 
announces his " Doctrine," 105. 

Monroe Doctrine, 105 ; accepted by 
the world, 107 ; joint responsibility 
for, 107 ; effect of, on Europe, 107. 

Montebello, battle of, 224. 

Montgolfier, ballooning, 17. 

Montgomery, secession convention 
at, 244 ; loyalty of, in 1876, 302. 

Moore, Sir John, " Burial of," 53. 

Moore, Thomas, 26 ; on Emmett, 
41 ; Irish melodies, 84. 



INDEX. 



405 



Morse, S. F. B., designs first tele- 
graph, 141 ; sends first telegram, 
180. 

Moscow, capture of, 70 ; retreat 
from, 71 ; university of, 86. 

Mount Cenis tunnel, 232. 

Naples, Victor Emmanuel enters, 
241. 

Napoleon, influence of, 15 ; First 
Consul, 31; king of Italy, 3 1 ; em- 
peror of France, 31 ; power of, 
32 ; ambition of, 35'; after Trafal- 
gar, 46 ; in Spain, 53 ; insatiate 
appetite for conquest, 54 ; " lord 
of the universe," 58 ; influence of, 
59 ; grip of, 61 ; supremacy of, in 
1810 ; treatment of Spain, 66 ; in 
181 1, 68; stirs up war between 
England and United States, 68 ; 
's Grand Aiiny " of , in 1812, 70; 
invades Russia, 70 ; in Moscow, 
71 ; retreats, 72; raises new army 
in 181 3, 72 ; coalition against, 73 ; 
refuses truce, 75; defeated, 76; 
banished to Elba, 76 ; lands in 
France, 77 ; conquered and ban- 
ished to St. Helena, 77 ; age 
closed, 81 ; death of, loi ; on the 
future of Europe, 157 ; second 
funeral of, 167, 169 ; on American 
"expansion," 203. 

Nares near North and South poles, 
291. 

National Guard of France hiss 
Charles X., 135. 

Navarino, battle of, 125. 

Needle-gun, invention of, 267. 

Nelson, Horatio, victories of, 38 ; 
death of, 39. 

New'Guinea in 1800, 23. 

New Orleans, battle of, 80. 

Newspapers, growth and power of, 

SSI- 
New Zealand in 1800, 23. 
Niagara forced to work, 375. 
Nicholas I. of Russia, absolutism 

of, 157 ; death of, 221. " 
Nicholas II. of Russia, advances 
under, 357 ; proposes peace con- 
ference, 367 ; invites the world, 368. 



Nice pledged to France, 240. 
Niebuhr, Roman history, 84 
Niederwald, national monument on, 

309- 
Niemen River, Napoleon crosses, 70. 
Nightingale, Florence, service of, 

219. 
Nineteen Hundred, the world in, 

383. 
North German Confederation, 266, 

267. 
Northwest Company, 119. 
Northwest Passage discovered, 208. 
Nonvay under French control, 20. 

Obstacles in 1S85, 321. 

O'Connell, Daniel, Iiish agitator, 
174 ; defeat of, 175. 

" On to BerUn 1 " 281. 

Opposition to constituted govern- 
ment, 323. 

Orange Free State, 289. 

" Orders in Council," 49. 

Ornithology in 1830, 149. 

Outlanders, revolt of, 370. 

Pacific railroad built, 272. 
Palmerston, Lord, consents to give 

France remains of Napoleon, 168 ; 

foremost statesman, 170 ; on Louis 

Napoleon, 226. 
Panama, Pan-American Congress at, 

129 ; canal, 339. 
Pan-American Congress fair pro- 
posed, 129 ; in 1889, 338. 
Parini, 27. 
Paris captured, 1814,76; revolt in, 

186 ; surrender of, 282 ; commune 

in, 283. 
Parliament of Religions, the, 353. 
Parnell, Charles Stuart, Irish leader, 

300 ; arrest of, 317. 
Parr)', Lieutenant, in the Arctic, 119. 
Pasteur, hydrophobia cure, 359. 
Peace, conference for universal, 367, 

374 ; victories of, 351. 
Pedro, Dom, emperor of Brazil, 103. 
Perry, Commodore M. C, opens 

China to America, 210. 
Persia, in 1800, 19. 
Peni, battle-ground of South Amer- 



4o6 



INDEX. 



ican independence, 103 ; conquest 
of, 104 ; war with Chili, 322. 

Pestalozzi, 25 ; educating the people, 
127. 

Petofi, author of Hungary's Marseil- 
laise, 192. 

Philadelphia, exhibition of 1876, 301. 

Philanthropy, age of, 328. 

Philhellenes, or " Friends of 
Greece," no. 

Philippines, ceded to United States, 
370. 

Philology in 1830, 149. 

Philosophy in 1830, 149. 

Photography, advances in, 376. 

Physiology in 1830, 149. 

Pinckney, reply to France, 23. 

Pitt, Willian, leader of England, 33, 
34 ; after Austerlitz, 48 ; after 
Trafalgar, 48. 

Plevna, siege of, 307. 

Plombieres, alliance of, 223. 

Poland revolution in, 137 ; " Russifi- 
cation " of, 337. 

Polytechnic of Paris, 86. 

Pope, the, a prisoner of Napoleon, 57. 

Portugal under French control, 20 ; 
revolts from Napoleon, 51, 52; 
aroused against Napoleon, 67. 

Postage, penny, in England, 179. 

Postage-stamp, first, 179. 

Prague, treaty of, 267. 

Preble, 43 

Prim, General, Spanish leader, 269. 

Prussia awed by France, 20 ; in 
1805, 39, 42. 

Psychology in 1830, 149. 

Puebla, battle of, 254. 

Pushkin, Alexander, 27 ; his " Monu- 
ment," 86. 

Railroads, early, in Europe, 139 ; 

development of, 351 ; speed on, 

352 ; in 1899, 376. 
Ramsey, Professor, discovers liquid 

air, 376. 
Reactionary rulers in 1830, 154. 
Rebellion of 1861 in United States, 

249. 
Redan, the, at Sebastopol, 220 ; fall 

of, 221. 



Red Cross, the, 360. 

Reform Bill of 1832 passed by par- 
liament, 137, 143; importance of, 
171. 

Religion in 1830, 149 ; growth and 
broadening in, 354. 

Rhodes, Cecil, influence of, 371. 

Riel, Louis, first rebellion of, 273; 
defeat and death of, 339. 

Renan, observations of, 292. 

Roberts at Kandahar, 319. 

" Rocket," the, first locomotive, 126. 

Rodgers, 43. 

Romberg revolutionizes study of 
nervous diseases, 127. 

Rome, capture of, 282 ; made capi- 
tal of Italy, 279, 282. 

Rontgen discovers X-rays, 376. 

Ross, Sir John, in the arctic, 119. 

Rousseau, 25, 26. 

Russia in 1800, 19 ; in 1805, 41 ; 
joins France, 49 ; against Napo- 
leon, 67; invades Siberia, 113 
jealousy of western Europe, 216 
influence of Crimean War on, 221 
234 ; serfs emancipated, 256 
war with Turkey, 307 ; in Asia, 
318; national unity of, 328 
" Russification " of Poland and 
Finland, 339. 

Russian America. See Alaska. 

Russian Fur Company, 1 19. 

" Russification." See Russia. 

St. Helena, Napoleon banished to, 

77- 
Sadowa, battle of, 267. 
Salamanca, battle of, 67. 
Salvation Army, the, 325. 
Samoa, trouble in, 336 ; hurricane 

in, 337- 
San Martin, the liberator, 89; crosses 

Andes, 89, in Peru, 103; meets 

Bolivar, 103 ; resigns leadership, 

103 ; death of, 130. 
San Stefano, peace of, 307. 
Saragossa, " Maid of," 56. 
Sardinia, kingdom of, rise to power 

of, 205. 
Sarmiento, Domingo, statesmanship 

of, 287. 



INDEX. 



407 



Sartorius advocates steam for war 
vessels, 232. 

Schelling, 26. 

Schill, Major, 57. 

Schiller, 26; in 1815, 84. 

Schlegel, 26. 

Schroder, 85. 

Science in 1830, 145. 

Scott, Sir Walter, " Marmion," 84. 

Sebastopol, siege of, 218; fall of, 
221. 

Second War of American Inde- 
pendence (1812), 80. 

Sedan, surrender of, 281. 

Seeley, Prof., on Sepoy rebellion, 

233- 

Seignobos on transformation dur- 
ing Nineteenth Century, 345, 364. 

Senefelder, Alois, lithography, 17. 

Sepoy rebellion, 232. 

SeiTano, Marshal, Spanish leader, 
269 ; dictator, 305. 

" Seven Weeks' War " of 1866, 266. 

Seward champion of anti-slavery, 184. 

Sewing-machine, invention of, 195. 

Ship-building, 17. 

Schleswig-Holstein War, 255. 

SicOy, conquest of, 240. 

"Sick Man of Europe," the, 166, 
.306. 

Siberia, Russia in, 113. 

Siddons, Mrs., 85. 

Sikhs of the Punjab, revolt of, 182 ; 
loyalty of, in Sepoy rebellion, 233. 

Slavery in United States in 1820, 
145 ; abolished in Cuba, 320. See 
Lincoln. 

Slave-trade abolished, 112. 

Small-pox, prevention of, 17. 

Smith, S. F., author of " America," 
missionary hymn, 118. 

Smith, Sydney, contempt for Ameri- 
can literature, 95. 

Socialism in Germany, 323. 

Socialist efforts, 274, 298. 

Social Science Association, 232. 

SoKerino, battle of, 224. 

Sommering suggests telegraph to 
Napoleon, 83. 

South African Repubhc proclaimed, 
318. 



South America, progress of, 2S7 ; 
real benefaction of, 288 ; in 1889, 

334- . - 

South Carolina secedes, 243. 

Southern Confederacy struggles for 
recognition, 257. 

Southern States secede, 244. 

Spain in North America, 21 ; under 
French control, 20, 39 ; turns 
against Napoleon, 51, 67 ; sells 
Florida, 90; revolution in, 91, 
269 ; seeks " alien " king, 270 ; 
constitutional unity of, 305 ; Al- 
fonso, king of, 305 ; war with 
United States, 369 ; defeat of, 
370. 

Spanish America, revolt of, 87, 89. 

Spencer, philosophy of, 292. 

" Spheres of Influence," 323,332,379. 

Steamboats, 61, 83, 94. 

Steamships, development in - and 
speed of, 352. 

Stein, exile of, 53 ; rouses Germany, 

73- 

Steinheil perfects a telegraph, 142. 

Stephenson, George, opens first 
railway in England, 1 16 ; inaugu- 
rates modern railway, 126. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, in Samoa, 
336 ; on Bismarck, 337. 

Strasburg, Louis Napoleon at, 169. 

Strikes and labor troubles, 275. 

Students, enthusiasm of, in 181 5, 85. 

Suez Canal built and opened, 271. 

" Sully," ship, Morse designs tele- 
graph on, 141. 

Sumter, Fort, bombardment of, 248. 

Sweden under French control, 20 ; 
reforms in, 357. 

Switzerland under French control, 
20, 40 ; new constitution of, 137 ; 
popular government in, 294. 

Sverdrup, Norwegian leader 356. 

Szechenyi', " Apostle of Hungarian 
emancipation," 116, 173. 

Tai-ping rebellion in China, 210. 
Taine on Napoleon, 102 ; on Byron, 

110. 
Talbot, Fox, improves daguerrotype, 

178. 



4o8 



INDEX. 



Talma on Erfurt, 84. 
Taou-Kwang, Chinese emperor, 209. 
Tara, Hill of, great meeting on, 174. 
Tasmania in 1800, 23. 
Tchernaya, battle of, Sardinians at, 

Teen-wang, See Hung-sew. 

Telegram, the first, 180. 

Telegraph, beginnings of, 142 ; 
Morse's idea of, 142 ; experiments 
with, 143 ; growth of, 291. 

Telephone introduced, 326. 

TeKord, 61. 

Temperance reform, 147. 

Tennyson, " Locksley Hall," 1 50, 
1 55 ; Ode on Wellington, 2 1 1 ; " In 
Memoriam," 213, 214; "Charge 
of the Light Brigade," 2 1 8. 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, at 
St. Helena, 71 ; on George III. 
and George IV., 92. 

Theatre in 181 5, 85. 

Thiers, Louis Adolph, prime minis- 
ter, 165 ; desires constitutional 
monarchy, 166; arraigns Louis 
Napoleon, 269 ; agrees to peace 
of Versailles, 283 ; president of 
French republic, 283. 

Tilsit, treaty of, 49. 

" Times," London, 26. 

Todleben, ability of, 218. 

Tolstoi, Count Lyon, 313 ; teachings 
of, 314; influence of, 316, 325, 
340, 

Torres Vedras, stand at, 67. 

Total Abstinence Society, first, 147. 

Toynbee, Arnold, " settlement " or- 
ganizer, 325. 

Trafalgar, battle of, 39. 

Transvaal annexed, 308. See South 
African Republic. 

Tripoli, pasha of, 43. 

Trusts, rise of, 374. 

Truxton, 43. 

Turin, Victor Emmanuel proclaimed 
king of Italy at, 242. 

Turkey in 1800, 20 ; war with Rus- 
sia, 217,307; in 1875,305; trou- 
bles in, 306 ; war with Greece, 366. 
See " Sick Man of Europe," and 
" Eastern Question." 



Tyndall, studies of, 292. 
Typewriter introduced, 326. 
Tyrol, revolt of, 56. 

Uhland's folk-songs, 120. 

" Uncle Tom's Cabin " published, 
213. 

United States in 1800, 21 ; in the 
Mediterranean, 42 ; in 1805, 44 ; 
Napoleon's designs on, 57 ; in 
1820, 93 ; steamboats in, 94 ; rec- 
ognizes South American Repub- 
lics, 104; industries and inventions 
in 1830, 141 ; slavery in, 145 ; 
"isms" in, 145; literature in, in 
1835, 160 ; not represented at first 
Pan-American Congress, 129; in 
1 830-1 840, 134 ; slavery troubles 
of 1840, 176; reformers in, 176; 
expansion of, 203 ; treaty with 
China, 210; secession in, 243, 244 ; 
opinions in, in 1861, 246; treaty 
with Japan, 211 ; crisis in 1856 in, 
228 ; liberation in, in i860, 231, 
234 ; Civil War in, 249, 260 ; Eu- 
ropean sympathy, 251, 260 ; close 
of war, 261 ; new epoch in 1880, 
319; growth of, 223'^ centennial 
of Constitution, 334 ; in the Pa- 
cific, 336 ; arbitrates sealing trou- 
bles, 357 ; woman suffrage in, 360 ; 
war with Spain, 369 ; conquers 
Philippines, 370 ; becomes world- 
power, 370 ; advances in, by 1870, 
286 ; celebrates centennial, 301. 

Universal Peace conference, 367, 
374- 

Vaccination, 17. 

Van Dyke, Dr., on " In Memoriam," 
213. 

Venice overthrown, 20. 

Versailles, peace of, 283. 

Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, 
205 ; declares war on Austria, 224 ; 
annexes Lombardy, 224 ; supports 
Cavour, 240 ; enters Naples, 241 ; 
hailed king of Italy, 241 ; pro- 
claimed king, 242 ; unites Italy, 
269, 270 ; bound by treaty, 279. 

Victoria, Queen, accession of, 150 ; 



INDEX. 



409 



favors American Union, 258 ; em- 
press of India, 299 ; jubilee of, 

329- 
Victoria bridge opened, 232. 
Victorian Era, the, 150. 
Vienna, Congress of, 83. 
Villeneuve, defeat of, 39. 
Villa Franca, peace of, 225, 226 ; 

Lowell's poem on, 227. 
Volksraad refuses redress, 370. 
Von Moltke, masterly generalship 

of, 281. 
Volta, Alessandro, voltaic pile, 17. 

Wagner at Bayreuth, 292 ; influ- 
ence of, 293. 
Wagram, battle of, 56. 
Walcheren, defeat at, 58 
Wales, Prince of, visits America, 

257- 

Wallace on early railways in Eng- 
land, 139. 

Washington, George, influence of, 
14, 15 ; farewell advice, 25, 44 ; 
against foreign alliances, 205 ; sug- 
gests " Monroe Doctrine," 107 ; 
plea for union, 244. 

Washington, treaty of, 295. 

War of 181 2, United States and 
England, 79. 

War of Liberation in 1813, 74. 

Waterloo, battle of, 77. 

Watts, James, modern steam-engine 
dates from, 140. 

Wellesley. See Wellington. 

Wellington, Duke of, in India, 40 
in Portugal, 52, retains Spain, 67 
prominence of, 82 ; shield, loi 
prime minister, 125 ; resigns, 126 
death of, 211. 



Webster, Daniel, champion of Amer- 
ican idea, 128, 145 ; on compro- 
mise of 1850, 185 ; death of, 211, 
212. 

West Indian Islands in 1800, 24. 

" White City," the, 353. 

Whitman, influence of, 293. 

Whitney, Eli, 18, 61. 

Whittier on England's abolition of 
slavery, 144. 

William I., king of Prussia, 257. 

William I., of Germany, refuses Na- 
poleon's demands ; proclaimed 
emperor, 282 ; arbitrates between 
England and United States, 295 ; 
centennial greeting to United 
States, 302 ; death of, 327. 

William II. of Germany, accession 
of, 327 ; arrogance of, 331 ; 
" strenuousness of," 349 ; dimisses 
Bismarck, 350. 

Wilhelmshoe, Napoleon III. pris- 
oner at, 281. 

Wolfe's " Burial of Sir John Moore," 

54- 
Woman, advance of, 360. 
Woman's suffrage, 361. 
Worth, battle of, 281. 
Wurschen, battle of, 73. 

X-RAYS, discovery of, 376. 

" Young Germany " in 1835, ^5^- 
Young Turkey, 306. 

Zhukovski, " Poet in the Russian 

Camp," 86. 
Zoology in 1830, 149. 
Zulu appeal to England, 308. 



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love and has, in this book, woven about them a 
romance of rare power and great beauty. Marcia, 
the heroine, is a strong and delightful character, and 
the book will easily take high rank among the most 
effective and absorbing stories based upon a dramatic 
phase of American history. 



The Famous Pepper Books 

By MARGARET SIDNEY 

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew 

)2mo^ illustrated^ $1.50 

"A genuine child classic." 

Five Little Peppers Midway 

I2tn0f illustratedt $1.50 
" Every page is full of sunshine." — Detroit Free Press, 

Five Little Peppers Grown Up 

I2mo, folly illustrated, clotli^ $1.50 

"The tale sparkles with life and animation. The young people are 
bright and jolly, and enjoy their lives as everybody ought to do." — 
Wojnan's Journal. 

Phronsie Pepper 

The Last of the Five Little Peppers 

Illustrated by Jessie McDermott. t2mo^ clotli^ $1.50 

''T^HIS closing book of the now world-famous series of the " Five Little 
* Pepper Books " has been enthusiastically welcomed by all the boys 
and girls of America to whom the Five Little Peppers have been dear ever 
since they first appeared in the " Little Brown House." This new book is 
the story of Phronsie, the youngest and dearest of all the Peppers. But 
Polly and Joel and Ben and Jasper and Mamsie, too, are all in the story. 

The Stories Polly Pepper Told 

One volume, J2mo» Illustrated by Jessie McDermott 
and Etheldred B. Barry^ $1.50 

A CHARMING " addenda " to the famous " Five Little Pepper Stories." 
It is a unique plan of introducing old friends anew. Wherever there 
exists a child or a " grown-up " to whom the Pepper family has become 
dear, there will be a loving and vociferous welcome for these charming, 
characteristic, and delightful "Stories Polly Pepper Told." 



^^.^j^it"-''-'^**-*^**"'^-^"^^^^ 



A Little Maid of Concord 
Town 

A Romance of the American Revolution 

By MARGARET SIDNEY. One volume^ J2nio, 
illustrated by F. T. Merrill, $1.50 

A DELIGHTFUL Revolutionary romance of life, 
love and adventure in old Concord. The author 
lived for fifteen years in the home of Hawthorne, in 
Concord, and knows the interesting town thoroughly. 
Debby Parlin, the heroine, lived in a little house 
on the Lexington Road, still standing, and was sur- 
rounded by all the stir and excitement of the months 
of preparation and the days of action at the begin- 
ning of our struggle for freedom. 

By Way of the Wilderness 

By **PANSV (Mrs. G. R. Alden) and MRS. 
C. M. LIVINGSTON. J2mo, clotH, illustrated by 
Charlotte Harding, $1.50 

THIS story of Wayne Pierson and how he evaded 
or met the tests of misunderstanding, environ- 
ment, false position, opportunity and self-pride ; how 
he lost his father and found him again, almost lost 
his home and found it again, almost lost himself and 
found alike his manhood, his conscience and his 
heart is told us in Pansy's best vein, ably supplement- 
ed by Mrs. Livingston's collaborationo 



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